


Floundering

by Cherry



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: But eventual Eruri, Discussion of masturbation, Hange is Hange, I don't even know what this is..., King!Erwin, Levi is an incorrigible flirt who can't help himself, M/M, Merman!Levi, Not my usual style, Sex, Slow Build, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 06:59:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherry/pseuds/Cherry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little, foul-mouthed, know-it-all Levi is a merman, living a contented life in the ocean with his friends. The only problem is that he can't resist going where he's been told not to.</p><p>Erwin is king of a small kingdom, threatened by the empire across the sea, ruled by the aggressive King Titus... </p><p>AU - very loosely based on "The Little Mermaid". There seem to be a lot of really enjoyable mermaid AUs and fan art around at the moment. I've always liked mermaids - I couldn't resist joining the party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Curiosity

The life before was like dreaming, and dreams can be visions of paradise or hell, can’t they? Fucked if I remember which it was most of the time. The light was always dim, though, even in the shallows. We weren’t allowed too close to the surface, except during storms and when we were very far from land.

The light was dim and green or grey, fading into darkness in the depths until it drowned slowly and even the fish had to carry their own lights with them. That far down, the fish were mostly teeth. We weren’t supposed to dive below the light, but we were young, and thought we were immortal. We knew fuck all. We were told our world, above the abyss and below the surface, was the only safe place. Like most infants, we were warned against curiosity, and, like all but the dullest brats, warnings only made us more curious. I’ll admit it; I was the most curious of us all.

We thought our lives were pretty good. I can’t deny we had a lot of freedom, within the restrictions imposed on us. We swam, and hunted, and basked in the shallows as close to the surface as we were permitted to go, where banners of yellow light warmed the water and striped the jade with gold. I carried a knife made of sharp bone to catch fish that were too big to take with hands and teeth alone. Of all of us, I was the best hunter, and when the sharks came too close I was the one who killed them. One deep cut was usually all it took. The others were worried by the clouds of blood, but I never gave a shit about things like that. The water washed everything away.

The others often told me I was beautiful - as though I gave a shit about that either. All I cared about was swimming further and faster than anyone, diving down to the very limits of what was allowed, reaching up closer to the surface. They told me it was dangerous, and I laughed at them. I killed an orca once – ten times my size or more – and so I thought nothing could hurt me. I thought I had nothing to fear.

I remember everything about my first storm, although I must have been very young. When I broke the surface and felt the cruel wildness of the wind, and the biting lash of the spray, and the rolling power of the heaving waves, I felt a freedom that was different from anything in the world below. The air was a cold burn in my lungs - a welcome kind of pain. It was so much shaper than the slow flow of water through gills that at first it left me gasping, but from the start I knew I wanted more of it. 

I don’t know how many years passed before I saw my first human. Under the surface we only measure time in changing currents and the different kinds of fish that came to our waters in different seasons. On that day, we all swam up to the surface the moment we were given permission, and burst into a raging, boiling sea churning beneath piled black clouds. At the first clap of thunder several of my friends dived for safety. The lightning that followed made even my heart jump, but it turned the whole sky silver, and stark black against it I saw the silhouette of something huge and utterly alien. One of my friends saw it too, and shouted, “A ship! Get back under!”

I couldn’t obey. I’d seen a few rotted hulks of wrecks, but the sea had made them almost unrecognisable as more than small reefs colonised by corals. I’d heard rumours about ships that cut the waves in two, and the mystery of dry land where human men and women lived, but I’d never seen those things. I wanted to see humans, and I was used to doing what I liked and getting what I wanted. My friend, Farlan, swam back to me and grabbed my arm. “Come back!” he cried, but I was an arrogant little brat, and I thought I knew better. I shoved him away – I was always strong – and swam towards the ship faster than he could follow. I could hear him calling me – “Levi!” and I took no notice.

But something was wrong with the ship. It was sinking beneath the waves. I could see figures – some clinging to ropes and parts of the ship that I had no names for then – spars, and rigging, I know now – others falling into the sea in the crappiest, most awkward dives I’d ever seen. I think I laughed when I saw their four flailing limbs. They looked like squid with half their legs torn off.

I swam closer, and watched them yelling and splashing about, making a shit job of swimming most of them. Soon they’d all disappeared under the surface, apart from one, who was swimming towards me. I wanted to know what these humans were like – wanting to know has always been my trouble – and so I reached out my arms to him, and he grabbed onto me. I pulled him close and I could feel his heart thumping against my chest. Although he was in the cold sea, his body was hot – as warm as the golden light in the shallows. When I pressed closer, and wound my tail around his strange, flailing lower limbs, he started shouting something, but his words made no sense. I told him it would be all right – that below the surface of the water there were no waves and all his friends had already gone under – but he couldn’t understand me, so I decided to show him. The truth was I wanted to keep him, at least for a while. I wanted to learn his language, and find out about the humans and their strange world. Drawing him down was easy at first, but when he realised what I was doing, and, I think, when he saw my tail, he looked frightened and started to struggle. I held him tight, and tried to make reassuring sounds, and soon he stopped fighting me. I was so proud of myself as I took him down to the seabed, but when I turned to look at him again he wasn’t moving anymore, and soon his body was as cold as my own. I didn’t know anything about humans, but I knew what death looked like, and I was sorry that he’d died.

After the storm had passed, there was enough light to let me examine him properly. His skin was rough and he wore a bright hoop of gold in his ear. I knew gold – some of my older friends had found gold discs on the seabed after a shipwreck. The human’s chest and arms were shaped like mine, but he was bigger than me, and instead of the shining blue-silver scales of my tail, his forked lower limbs were hidden by some kind of fins or skin, rough, striped blue and white. His face was handsome, although the lower half of it was covered in bristly black hairs like the spines of sea urchins, but less prickly.

My friend, Farlan, came to look at my human. “What have you found, Levi?”

“A human, from the ship that sank,” I told him. “I wanted to ask him about the human world, but he died.”

Isabel came swimming up, the reddish gold of her scales flashing as she flicked her tail. “Did you kill him, Levi?”

“No. I brought him out of the storm,” I explained. “But he still died. I don’t know why. Perhaps the water was too cold?”

Isabel pulled the gold ring out of the dead man’s ear. “Can I keep this?”

“If you want,” I said. Isabel performed a gleeful twisting back flip and then kissed me. Farlan was looking serious as fuck though. “Levi,” he said, “you shouldn’t have brought him here. Humans can’t live in the water. They don’t have gills, you idiot.”

I looked at the human’s neck more carefully, and saw that Farlan was right. “Well how was I supposed to know that?” I asked, feeling angry with him for calling me an idiot, but more with myself for my ignorance. “Why doesn’t anyone ever tell us anything about them? If I’d known –”

“Oh well,” Farlan said, “I suppose it doesn’t matter. All the other sailors died anyway. He was too far from land to survive. Hey – Izzy – stop that!”

Isabel was busy attempting to remove the blue and white striped stuff from the human’s lower half.

“I thought that was part of him,” I said.

“No – look!” Isabel cried, yanking hard, exposing the sailor’s cock, which was just lying there all naked and disgusting with no scales to cover it decently. Isabel laughed and poked it.

Farlan shoved her out of the way. “Leave it alone. Don’t touch dead things.”

“Ugh – like a sea cucumber,” Isabel said, peering closer. “No scales at all!”

“That’s why humans wear clothes,” Farlan explained. “They don’t have anything to cover those parts. And to keep them warm. You’ve felt the wind on the surface, how cold it is.”

“Look at those weird stumps!” Isabel said. “How do they swim, with those?”

“ _Legs_ ,” said Farlan. “And they don’t swim, most of the time. They _walk_.”

“What’s walk?” Isabel asked. “How come you know all this shit, anyway?”

“Walking is how they move on the land,” Farlan said. “Your tail would be useless there.” He hesitated for a long moment, and then said, “I know because I saw land once. My friend was caught in a net by some human men who were trying to catch fish. We’d gone too close to land. I followed the boat as it dragged him along, and tried to cut the nets with my knife, but the rope was thick and before I’d made a hole big enough for him to get out, the men started to haul the net up to the boat. I could see them walking about on the deck. When they saw what they’d caught they started making strange gestures and shouting. They dragged him out of the net and started to tie other ropes around him, but he struggled and bit until he managed to get away. He was halfway across the deck when one of them stuck a harpoon right through his tail and pinned him there. He managed to pull himself free and flipped himself off the boat. I grabbed his arm and swam us both away, but he was bleeding so much that I knew we wouldn’t get home without attracting the sharks. All we could do was to get into shallow water and wait for the bleeding to stop.

“We could see the shore, and we swam towards it, until the seabed became land, where the waves broke. We hid ourselves among rocks in the tide pools near the shore. There were people walking about on the land near the shore – all covered up like your human, with cloth in different colours. I waited with my friend, but his wounds were too deep, and he died. I stayed for a while, watching the people. The sky was so blue – and the land beyond the shore was bright green. I waited until night and tried to go onto the land, but moving out of the water is hard. Everything feels too heavy, and tails don’t work. In the end, I came home.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before?” I asked, angry that he’d been keeping such a big secret.

“The king told me not to,” Farlan said. “He said we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the lands above. Humans are cruel, he said, and he was right. Those fishermen were cruel.”

“Fuck that,” I said. “I want to see those lands and those people. The human man was so warm in my arms before he died.”

“The sun is warm,” Farlan sighed. “You don’t feel it during storms, but when the sky is blue, the sun is very warm.”

“I want to see the sky when it’s blue and feel the sun,” I insisted. “I don’t care if it’s dangerous. If those fishermen try to catch me, I’ll kill them. I’m quick, and my knife is sharp.”

Isabel swam up behind me and wrapped her arms around my waist, resting her little pointed chin on my shoulder. “Don’t go, Levi,” she said. “It’s not safe.” She bit my shoulder hard. I swore, and she and swam off laughing, but I knew she was worried about me.

“I don’t want you to go either,” Farlan said. “At least promise you won’t go to the shore. If you want to see the sky and feel the sun, I’ll swim to the surface with you.”

“It’s forbidden, except during storms when no one will see us,” Isabel said, circling the pair of us anxiously.

“It’s better than going to the shore, and you know Levi – he’ll have to do _something_ ,” Farlan said, as though I wasn’t even there. Then he put his hand on my cheek, and looked into my eyes. “Promise me you won’t go to the shore, Levi.”

“All right,” I agreed. “Just the surface – for now, anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll go next time the light is strong,” I said. Farlan kissed me, and later, when Isabel had gone, he let me fuck him for the first time in a while, so I knew he was worried about me, too.

 

For the next few days the light was low, and Farlan said that meant the sky wouldn’t be blue. I spent some time looking at the drowned sailor, but after a day or two he wasn’t very beautiful any more, and soon the fish started to eat his body. I swam and hunted and when some of the others came to me, like they tended to do, I let them kiss and touch and do what they felt like doing. It gave me a vague pleasure, but I was never satisfied. For some reason Farlan was the only one of them I ever really liked, for that. But, just as with the fish we caught, we were supposed to share.

Exploring near to where the ship had gone down, I found objects from the human world, and started to collect them together. There was a strip of what felt something like whale skin, with a metal thing on one end; a large piece of green cloth with a blue and white design on it that looked like gull wings; a heavy metal sphere as big as my cupped hands. I had no idea what any of these items could be, and when I showed Farlan and Isabel, they shook their heads.

“Why do you care?” Isabel asked, wrapping the cloth around her slender body and laughing. “Humans must be stupid, clumsy creatures with those _legs._ They can hardly even swim.”

“It’s a world we can’t reach,” I said.

“But the sea is much bigger than the land – the king said so. Why do you want to reach their world?”

“Because I’m not allowed to.”

Farlan smiled, but he looked a bit sad. “Levi…” he said.

“What?” I asked, but he didn’t say anything else.

x

 

On that day, the light was very bright, and I was surprised that Farlan had said nothing about it.

“Isn’t this light enough?” I asked him. “The sky must be blue today.”

“Yes,” he admitted, sounding unwilling.

“Well, then, let’s go!” I cried. Farlan swam close and took me in his arms, but I was in no mood for that kind of play. I let him kiss me, but then I pushed him away. He returned, and wrapped his arms and tail around me, pressing himself against me so that I could feel he was hard and ready to fuck.

“Won’t you change your mind?” he pleaded. “It’s not safe on the surface. Don’t you like it here, with me?”

The feel of his body against mine was making me hard too, but I was impatient to get up to the surface, and I wriggled free of his embrace. “I do like it,” I said, “but we can do that any time. I want to see the sky. You can stay here if you want, but I’m going. Don’t you want to come too?”

He could never resist me. If only I’d stayed with him and forgotten about the human world, none of what followed would ever have happened. Now that I understand guilt, I feel guilty that I can’t regret it, in spite of everything. 


	2. The Sky, Twice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read, commented and left kudos on this strange fic! Things will get stranger. In this chapter: Levi has to learn to communicate in a world he doesn't know and a language he doesn't speak!

Farlan and I broke the surface. I leapt out of the ocean with a powerful flick of my tail while he just put his head above the calm water cautiously. Spinning in the air from sheer exhilaration, I dived back into the sea and surfaced again, floating on my back, looking straight up into a colour so intense and pure it stole my breath. The air was warm, and for the first time in my life I felt the rays of the sun heating my skin with a fierce kiss that was the opposite of the cold wind’s bite. I looked towards the sun, but the brightness was a white burn and I had to look away.

“Have you ever seen anything so blue?” Farlan cried.

“Never. You were right. It’s beautiful.”

People – humans – often say the sea is blue, but beneath the waves it almost never is. To us the water is clear or murky, grey, or brown, or a thousand shades of green, but never really blue. Under this cloudless sky, though, the surface of the sea was a deep, deep blue, and it sparkled in the vivid light. When I looked at Farlan, I saw that his eyes were a similar colour to the sea when you saw them out of the water, and they shone very brightly.

“Be careful,” he warned, as I let the soft swell carry me, and felt the strangest warm, tightening sensation as the sun dried my skin. “Close your gils hard. If they dry out you’ll be in trouble.”

“Fuck,” I swore quietly. “I never thought of that.” Of course my gils had already closed as soon as my lungs took over in the air, but I made a conscious effort to tighten them even more. It felt weird. “Does that mean we couldn’t survive on land?” I asked.

“I think we could survive, but if your gills were damaged I supposed you wouldn’t be able to go back to living under water,” Farlan said. “I told you – the land is dangerous for us.”

There was a splash nearby, and Isabel shot out of the water, her golden scales gleaming and her red hair flying. “You bastards!” she yelled, flicking water over both of us with her tail, “How could you leave me behind?”

“You’re too young,” Farlan said. “Go back – it’s not safe.”

“No way!” Isabel’s expression was so furious that I laughed. I raised my head and scanned the horizon. “No ships,” I said. “No land. She’s safe with us.”

Reluctantly, Farlan agreed.

 

After that day, we returned to the surface whenever we could. We had to wait until the others were busy, but we three had hunted together for a long time, and it wasn’t hard to slip away. The day it happened, I broke the surface first, the others chasing me. Isabel crashed into me as she emerged. “Damn, Levi!” she yelled, “Why didn’t you get out of the way?” Then she fell silent as she saw the huge wooden wall of the ship not more than fifty tails in front of us. We should have seen the shadow on the surface, or noticed the vast hull in the sea, but we’d grown too confident - and I’d always been careless - shooting through the water too fast, and looking only upwards, so that we’d missed the danger until it was too late. Isabel darted back under the water immediately, dragging Farlan with her. I couldn’t bring myself to follow them. The ship was astonishing – bigger than the biggest whale I’d seen. I had no language to describe it then but I learned later that the billowing cloudy masses above its dark bulk were its sails. I could hear human voices, but from my low position in the sea I couldn’t see anyone on board. Then I heard the sound of music and I knew that, however dangerous it might be, I had to see. Swimming over to the ship, I looked up and saw that halfway up the side was a huge iron object I recognised as an anchor with a thick chain I could hold on to, if I could only reach, and above that, netting. I dived, and propelled myself upwards as fast as I could go, leaping out of the water. Grabbing for the anchor, I missed and had to twist to dive back into the water without injury. The second time I was successful, but as I hung there, all my weight supported by my hands, I understood what Farlan had meant about feeling heavy out of the water. Determined to see the humans on the ship, I hauled myself up the anchor chain until I reached the netting. After that it was easier, although I lost several scales against the rough rope, and my arm muscles were trembling by the time I pulled myself up to the base of a wooden rail that surrounded the deck, and was finally able to see.

Below me I heard a voice and looked down. Farlan was swimming next to the ship, staring up at me desperately. “Levi!” he cried, “What the fuck are you doing? Don’t be stupid!”

“It’s all right,” I called. “I’m just looking.”

“Levi!” he cried again, but I turned away from him and peered through the rails. The music I’d heard came from a sailor dressed in a similar way to the one I’d found – wide cloth coverings on his lower half, cream coloured, but without the stripes. He held something in his hands – a fiddle, I learned later – and made the music by scraping a stick over its strings. Other sailors were gathered around him listening. What mainly caught my attention though was a group of three men in blue, with gold decorations on their shoulders, who stood together talking and looking very serious.

Two of them were tall and the third was even taller; a blond man with the same kind of prickly-looking hairs on his chin as my accidentally drowned sailor, only these were a golden brown. The black-haired man was the shortest, and had a narrow, expressive face with shark-like dark eyes. Both men were interesting, but it was the middle one who held my attention. His hair was bright gold in the sunlight, and his face was very handsome. I wondered what it would be like to kiss a human.

Without thinking, I pulled myself higher up onto the railing to see him more clearly, and that was when the handsome human looked up and saw me. My first impulse was to dive back into the water, but I controlled it because I wanted to see what he’d do. As soon as his eyes met mine he went still, and then a strange expression crossed his face. It was a look of desire, mixed with a kind of relief, like the feeling I had when I killed a shark that was threatening my friends. His intense gaze disturbed and excited me. For the first time, I was glad that people found me beautiful.

The other sailors had noticed me now, and there were cries and exclamations. Although I couldn’t understand their words, I could tell that some sounded angry and some frightened. The handsome man didn’t seem frightened. He crossed the deck to me. I gripped the rail tightly, ready to push myself off the ship and escape if necessary. The sailors had weapons, and their looks were threatening, but the blond man smiled and came close. I looked up into his eyes and they made me think of the first time I saw the blue sky.

I couldn’t help myself – I lifted my body further up, balancing my hips on the wooden rail so that I could let go with one hand. The sailors made frightened noises when they saw my tail properly. I reached out to touch the handsome man, and he put his hand over mine where it rested on his smooth, warm cheek. He said something, but I didn’t understand his language. I shook my head. “I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re saying,” I told him, “but who cares? Kiss me.” I leaned in to kiss him and a look of alarm crossed his face. He moved back a little, and his big hand closed over mine. Then he gripped my other arm with his free hand, and pulled me over the rail and onto the ship. I heard a frightened cry from Farlan, and some of the sailors rushed to the side and looked down into the sea. One of them had a harpoon. I remembered Farlan’s story about his friend and the fishermen, and I started to struggle, but the blond man was much bigger than I’d thought, and I couldn’t get free. The sailor raised the harpoon and threw it.

“No!” I screamed, and the man holding me shouted something at the same time. There was no sound from the water below. The sailor hauled in the rope that was attached to the harpoon. At first I was relieved when only the sharp metal weapon clattered onto the deck, but then I saw that the water dripping from it was red. I shouted Farlan’s name and tried to fight, but the blond man had both my arms in a strong grip, and out of the water my body felt awkward and heavy. A sailor came with a net, which he threw over me, and others tied more ropes around me so that I couldn’t use my arms. Once I was restrained, they dragged me down through a hole into the cavern of the ship’s belly and threw me into a dark place with iron bars. I lay on the hard wood, trying to keep my gills shut tight, feeling my skin drying and tightening, thinking about Farlan. What if he died, because of my stupid curiosity? I didn’t want him to be dead. That blond man was the one who should be dead, tricking me like that, letting the sailors hurt Farlan! If I could stay alive, I promised myself that I would kill him as soon as I got the chance.

They didn’t leave me alone for long. Soon my captor appeared with the very tall man I’d seen before, and a brown-haired woman who wore a strange contraption on her face with clear disks in front of her eyes. She was holding some kind of a light, like the deep-sea fish carry as part of them, which she hung on a hook on the wooden beam beside her. She seemed very excited to see me, and started saying all kinds of things to both the men. Although I couldn’t understand a word, it seemed that she was giving them instructions. The tall one went away, and the woman came close to the bars of my prison and stared at me. She kept repeating something I assumed was a question.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I told her, “and I wouldn’t tell you anything if I did, shit-for-brains.” I glared at the blond one who had caught me. “As for you – I’m going to kill you, you bastard!”

The woman glanced at the blond man, said something, and laughed.

She kept tapping her chest and saying “Hange”. Then she pointed at the blond man and said, “Erwin”.

I understood that she was telling me their names, but there was no way I was about to reciprocate. “I’m going to kill you, Erwin,” I growled.

Two sailors appeared rolling a huge barrel between them. I recognised what it was – we sometimes found them in the sea, especially after storms. The sailors opened an entrance in the bars of my prison and pushed the barrel inside, then stood it on its end, and pried the top off with some kind of metal tool. I was scared that they were going to shut me inside it, but one of them cut the ropes that bound me and removed the net. As soon as I was free, I tried to attack him, but my arms were heavy and numb from the rope, and he dodged out of the way. The sailors closed the door behind them, leaving me alone with the barrel. Hange and Erwin watched to see what I would do. I could smell salt water, and although I didn’t feel like humiliating myself in front of the humans, I remembered what Farlan had said about gills drying out, and so I used my arms and my tail to push myself high enough to reach the top of the barrel and heaved myself up. As I’d expected, it was full of fresh seawater. I dived in headfirst, and there was just enough room to twist myself around and surface again. The water was bliss on my drying skin. I submerged, and breathed through my gills. They still seemed to work perfectly well. It was a relief to be out of view of the humans, and I decided to stay underwater until they went away. I tried not to think about Farlan, but I missed him. I hoped Isabel was safe. Eventually I slept. When I woke and put my head out of the barrel, the sailors and the blond man had gone, but the woman was still there.

“Hello!” she cried. “Hello! Hello!” She waved her arms at me, grinning insanely. I scowled at her. I considered refusing to talk, but if I was going to escape, communication might be necessary, so I decided to play along. “Hello?” I tried.

She seemed very pleased. “Yes, yes – hello! _Hange_ ,” she said, tapping her chest again.

“Yes, I know you’re Hange,” I told her in my own tongue, rolling my eyes. “You’ve already told me that. I don’t know your language but I’m not an idiot!”

She grabbed a little block of something and started scratching it with a stick. The stick made marks on the block.

“Hange,” I said as clearly as I could. The human words were inelegant and felt thick in my mouth. I pointed at her, so that she would see that I understood her. “Zoe.” Then I raised my eyebrows in a question and said, “Erwin?”

She leapt to her feet. “Erwin?” She repeated. “Yes, yes, Erwin!” She threw down the block and stick, and ran off. A little while later she returned, with Erwin in tow. He was just as handsome as I remembered. I hated him.

“Erwin,” I snarled.

He looked at me calmly and spoke to Hange, who nodded excitedly. She gave him some long and complicated answer, waving her hands around all over the place, sometimes looking at me, sometimes at Erwin. She picked up the block she’d made the marks on, and looked at it while she spoke. That was interesting – what were the marks for? What was she saying about me?”

“I am here, you know,” I said. “Talking about me right in front of me is fucking rude.”

They both looked at me. I pointed at the thing Hange was holding, and she brought it to the bars to show me. The marks she’d made were small, regular in size but not in shape, and silvery grey in colour. The blocky object seemed to be made of separate pieces of some dry substance joined together, thin as kelp leaves. Hange layered them one on top of the next.

“What’s that?” I asked in my own language. Hange repeated my question in a terrible imitation of my words, and then pointed to the object.

“ _Book_ ,” she said.

“Book,” I repeated. The first sound was hard to make, but I thought I did well. Erwin smiled though, and I glared at him. “What’s so funny, fucker?”

He held up both his hands and shook his head. “ _Sorry_ ,” he said.

“Sorry,” I echoed. He came closer, joining Hange at the bars. Even in this low light I could see how blue his eyes were. I looked away.

Hange was holding up other objects though, and I couldn’t help my stupid curiosity getting the better of me. “Pencil,” she said, holding up the stick she’d been making the marks with. “Pencil.” She waited for me to say the word, then pointed at me and raised her eyebrows. What did she want? If she was waiting for me to tell her my word for this _pencil_ she’d be waiting a long time; I’d never seen anything like it before. Erwin said something to her, and she nodded, looking around the dimly lit space. Honestly! If we were going to get anywhere I was obviously going to have to help. What did we have in common? Erwin and I both raised our hands to our faces at the same moment and pointed at our eyes.

“Eye,” he said, as I told them, “yelka”. Erwin gave a barking laugh, sounding like an angry seal. I put my hands over my ears, scowling.

“Sorry,” he said again. “Great minds.”

“Sorry great minds,” I copied, wondering what those words meant.

“ _Wait! Wait!_ ” said Hange, like a gull’s cry. She took her _book_ and her _pencil_ and pointed at her own eyes behind the clear discs. “Yalka,” she said.

“ _Yelka_ ,” I corrected. She made marks in her book.

I sighed, and submerged, letting the water flow through my gills. The water was already getting stale, and it occurred to me that I was going to have to learn to communicate pretty damn fast if I didn’t want to be floating in a barrel of my own piss. When I emerged from the water, I wrinkled my nose. The seawater smell did little to hide the fact that these humans and their whole ship stank. I experienced a sudden aching longing for the vast, clean sea.

Scooping some of the water out of the barrel, I held it up to my nose and made a disgusted face. Hange was pretty quick on the uptake. She said something to Erwin, who called back into the ship somewhere I couldn’t see. It didn’t take long for two sailors to appear with a new barrel of seawater, and I had to consider the problem of how to relive myself without anyone noticing, before transferring into the clean water. The thought of pissing in the confined space of the barrel was revolting enough, but the idea of having an audience for such a filthy act was horrible. I mimed eating, and said, “I’m hungry.”

Hange nodded eagerly. She went away, followed by the two sailors, leaving me with Erwin.

He looked at me through the bars. “Erwin,” he said, tapping his chest, then pointing at me, waiting expectantly.

“Bastard,” I muttered, willing him to at least look away so I could piss in peace.

“Bastard,” he repeated, smiling. Oh perfect. Now he thought that was my name. Exasperated, I pointed at myself. “Levi,” I snarled at him. “Levi, all right? That’s my fucking name.”

“Levi,” he said.

I waved my hands at him. “Levi, yes. Now fuck off.” Turning my back on him I tried to pretend he wasn’t there but I could hear the bastard breathing, and his scent was in the air – not too disgusting for a human – fairly clean smelling – but still distracting. I couldn’t do anything with him there, and yet I was growing desperate. In the sea it wasn’t something I even thought about. You just waited until you were alone in the open, and then swam against the current, letting the water carry everything away in your wake.

There was a thumping sound behind me, and I turned quickly. Erwin had gone a few steps away to meet someone, and I took my chance while his back was turned, grimacing in disgust at the way the water turned warm. As soon as I was done I flipped myself out of that barrel and clambered into the other, grateful for the clean, cool water. I had no idea what I was going to do when I needed a shit.

Erwin returned with Hange and someone new - another blond man with an anxious expression, who was carrying an object in each hand. He waited while Zoe opened the bars – there was some way of doing that I couldn’t see, involving a lot of jangling and clattering – and the blond man came up to my barrel and handed me a curved piece of wood bearing some strange-smelling brown lumpy substance. I took a very small piece of whatever it was between my fingers and sniffed it suspiciously. Zoe was nodding. “Eat, eat, stew, mmm,” she said, miming chewing. I touched the strange food with my tongue and recoiled. It was hot and foul tasting. I pushed the whole lot away. It tipped over the blond man, who muttered something I was sure must have been a curse.

Hange handed me another piece of wood, upon which rested a dead fish. “Fish,” she said. “Eat fish?” I could just about stomach that, since it smelled fairly fresh, although I would much rather have caught my own. I ate the fish leaning out of the barrel so as not to pollute the water, and spat the inedible parts onto the floor. Hange watched me all the time, making marks in her book, but Erwin and the other man seemed to find something wrong with the way I was eating.

“What?” I asked angrily, although I knew they wouldn’t be able to give me any reply I could understand.

Hange was holding out another item – something that looked a bit like an unusually large white limpet shell, held upside-down. It was filled with fresh water, and I drank it all quickly. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I had become. Hange was foolish, I thought. She came very close. It would be easy to grab her and strangle her, or drown her in the barrel. Once I had hold of her, I doubted anyone would have been able to fight me off in time. But if I did that Erwin or the other man would probably kill me. It was better to bide my time until I was certain of escape.

Once I’d eaten, Hange went back to the other side of the bars, and began to show me more objects. I learned that the wooden containers for food were _bowls_ , the shell for drinking from was a _cup_ , and we exchanged words for nose, mouth, chin, hair and ears. Erwin spoke to her, and after that she began to call me Levi. After some time had passed, Erwin went away, and I told myself I was glad. Hange stayed with the other man, whom she introduced as Moblit – a name I had difficulty pronouncing at first. He kept staring at me, looking half disgusted and half fascinated.

Hange tested me on the words we had learned by pointing at objects and waiting for me to name them. She taught me _yes_ and _no_ , which made correcting mistakes simpler. I found it easy to remember most words, and she seemed surprised by that. She was forever looking at the marks she’d made in her book before she named the same objects in my tongue. Somehow the marks told her the words she needed. I didn’t understand how that worked, but it seemed a clumsy method to me. Was there something wrong with her memory?

After a while, Hange started to put words together. She would say, “I am Hange”, and I had to say, “I am Levi”, and then repeat the words in my language. It was a slow process, and I began to understand the point of her book when she could repeat whole sentences and I started to make mistakes. After a few failures of this kind frustration made me angry, and I retreated beneath the water and slept.

 

 


	3. Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Levi attempts to make friends with Mike, and learns a little more about humans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read this, and left comments and kudos. I really appreciate your feedback and support. For anyone wondering, this is gong to be Eruri quite soon.

When I woke and emerged from the water, Hange and Moblit had gone, and the very tall blond man was sitting on what Hange had called a _stool_ just outside the bars. He seemed to be sleeping, and I looked at his face for a while. He wasn’t as beautiful as Erwin, but his features were strong. I was bored, so I called to him, “Oi, human! Wake up!”

He opened his eyes, which were rather small compared with his mouth and nose, and sniffed loudly. It sounded like a small whale blowing, and I laughed. He looked surprised, and then he smiled. “Hello, Levi,” he said.

“Hello, Hair-chin.”

He laughed at that. His laugh was much nicer than Erwin’s – quieter, and warm. He stroked the hairs on his chin with one hand and said, “Beard. It’s called a beard.”

“Beard,” I repeated. “It’s called a beard.” He nodded. “No - it’s called a hair-chin,” I teased, and he gave his soft laugh again. With the kind of vague, pleasurable feeling of arousal I often felt when someone other than Farlan played with me, I thought it would be nice to touch this tall, blond man. It never occurred to me that he might not want me. Everyone wanted me; Farlan, and the others, and even Isabel, although she was too young yet for that kind of thing, and so I always pushed her away gently when she went too far in her caresses. I missed Isabel, but I missed Farlan most of all. I hoped he was alive.

But I didn’t want to think about sad things. There was no point in dwelling on what couldn’t be changed. This man was here now, and he seemed friendly. I hauled myself out of the barrel and used my arms to move myself nearer to the bars. I expect I looked very awkward, but I lay on my front, supporting myself on my elbows, and raised my tail behind me, spreading out my tailfins provocatively. I put one hand through the bars, and said, “beard.”

He was more cautious than Hange. He came close, but he pulled a knife out of a sheath attached to his leg with strips of some kind of cloth or skin. He knelt down in front of the bars, and held my wrist in his free hand, letting me touch his beard, but making it quite clear that he was ready to defend himself if I tried anything. The beard was softer than I’d expected – softer than my drowned sailor’s had been. I let my fingers wander over his cheek, and he made no protest, but when I touched his lips, his grip on my wrist tightened, and he moved his head back out of my reach before letting go of me. I was disappointed; his skin was warm, and I’d been hoping for at least a few kisses. If only I knew how to ask for them! I looked into his eyes. “I am Levi,” I said. “You?”

“I’m Mike,” he replied.

“Mike.” I held out my hand again, and said, “Hand, Mike, yes?”

“Yes,” he said. “That is your hand.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, this is ridiculous!” I muttered in my own language. I shook my head. “ _You_ hand,” I tried.

Mike looked doubtful, but he gave me his hand. I drew his hand through the bars, and stroked my small, smooth fingers over his big, rough ones. He tensed, and I thought I was getting somewhere. I bent my head and kissed his fingers, and he pulled his hand away instantly, jumping to his feet, and stepping back from the bars. “No,” he said.

“Mike…”

 “No, Levi.” He looked at me, and he didn’t seem angry, but his face was very serious. I wasn’t used to anyone refusing me, and I flicked my tail crossly, sulking like the spoiled brat I was.

I pulled myself over to my barrel and climbed back in. No wonder Mike didn’t want me, when all he could see was how ungainly I looked out of the water. If I could take him under the waves, things would be different. But then, if I took him under the waves, he would die. Tch. Why did life have to be so complicated?

I ran my fingers through my drying hair. Was I even beautiful, out of the water? The others had always called me beautiful, but I had never seen myself. I learned later that humans often depict us as vain creatures, holding combs and mirrors, but I had never encountered either of those things until after Erwin caught me.

Mike sat down on his stool again, and I ducked under the water to breathe through my gills for a while, but I soon grew bored with that. I leaned my arms on the edge of the barrel and watched Mike, swishing my tail from side to side as far as the barrel would allow, creating a current that cooled the skin under my scales.

“How long am I going to be stuck in this shit hole?” I asked at last. I knew he couldn’t understand me, but the frustration of not being able to communicate was worse than I’d imagined it would be. Mike looked up and spoke, shaking his head.

That was when I had my idea. In the shallows, where the light is bright enough to reach the seabed, Isabel and I had sometimes played a game in which we would take it in turns to trace objects in the sand with our fingers, and try to guess what was being pictured. If I could do something similar now, I would be able to find out the names of things that weren’t physically present. Remembering Hange’s words, I said as clearly as I could, “Book. Pencil.”

Mike looked at me.

“ _Book – pencil_ ,” I said again, making gestures as Hange had done when she made the marks in the book. Mike looked surprised, then walked into the shadows into the part of the ship I couldn’t see from my prison, and spoke to someone there. He returned to the bars, and stood looking at me. He said something containing the word _fish,_ which I recognised from my inadequate meal of the previous day. I couldn’t make anything of the other words, though, so I just repeated, “Book – pencil?” with the curious lift at the end that seemed to mean asking a question.

“They’re coming,” Mike said.

“They’re coming,” I echoed.

A youngish sailor I hadn’t seen before appeared with the two items and handed them to Mike, who slipped them through the bars. I had to climb out of the barrel again to reach them, which was annoying; every time I was forced to lug my tail about out of the water I was reminded of what an alien and hostile environment I found myself in.

Once the book was in my grasp, I took the pencil and attempted to draw. It was much harder than I expected. Starting with a simple shape, I drew a fish, and showed it to Mike. It was a rather wobbly oval, with crude fins and a tail. It was supposed to be a mackerel, but when Mike smiled encouragingly and said, “Fish,” that was good enough for me.

“Yes,” I nodded. “Fish.” I took the pencil and tried to draw Farlan. Although it seemed an impossible question to ask, I needed to know what had happened to him. If he’d died, the sailors might have seen his body floating on the surface. If he had lived, he would have dived. I drew the harpoon flying towards Farlan, but when I saw what I’d drawn, the reality of what had happened struck me properly for the first time, and something in my chest hurt hard enough to make me gasp. Mike asked a question, sounding concerned. I thrust the book back through the bars, and when he picked it up, his expression became very serious.

“Your friend?” he asked, pointing at Farlan.

“Farlan,” I said. I pointed at each of us in turn, and then my picture. “Levi. Mike. Farlan.”

“Farlan,” Mike repeated. He looked at me, and spoke, but I couldn’t work out a single word of what he was talking about.

“Is he dead?” I asked. “Is he alive?”

Mike shook his head, unable to understand me. I mimed dead, holding my arms out in front of me, face down, keeping still, and then I mimed swimming and diving, as best I could with only my upper body fully mobile, but Mike shook his head again.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“What does that _mean_?” I cried. “Fuck this! I need to get out of here. I need to find Farlan – if he’s still alive. You have to let me go!” I grabbed the bars and tried to pull them apart, but they were solid metal, and unmovable. I screamed in frustration.

Mike put his hands over mine on the bars. “Levi,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

Something hot and wet was leaking out of my eyes. Was I bleeding? I slid one hand out from under Mike’s, and wiped away the liquid. It was clear on my fingers – not blood.  

“What is it?” I asked, as Hange had taught me when we were naming objects.

“Tears,” Mike said.

“Tears,” I repeated. I had never experienced such a thing before. “What is tears?” I asked, but Mike couldn’t give me any reply I could understand.

 

Mike must have given Hange my drawing of Farlan and the harpoon, because when she came to see me later that day, she was carrying the book. Erwin was with her too, and he came right up to the bars and stood looking at me with a serious expression on his stupid, handsome face. I turned to face the wooden wall behind me.

“Levi,” Erwin said.

I couldn’t help but turn back. There was something compelling about his voice.

“What?” I said, frowning at him.

“Farlan,” he said. He took the book from Hange and held it out to me. Reluctantly, I flipped myself out of the water, and went to the bars to take it. Someone had drawn a series of pictures of Farlan in the water, the sailor with the harpoon, Erwin shouting something, and then Farlan’s tail vanishing beneath the waves.

I pointed at the last picture. “You saw his tail?” I asked. I put my fingers to my eyes, and then pointed at my own tail. “You saw him dive?”

Hange was quicker than Erwin this time. She repeated my word for tail, and told me the human equivalent. Erwin nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Tail.” He mimed a dive.

If Farlan had been able to dive, it was possible that the harpoon hadn’t wounded him too badly.

I was relieved by the news, and I hated Erwin a bit less because he’d come to explain what happened. But he was clearly the one in charge – and so he was the one keeping me prisoner.

I pointed at myself and then tried to shake the bars of the prison. “Why are you keeping me here?” I asked. “Let me go!”

I knew Erwin couldn’t understand my words, but he seemed to interpret my gestures correctly. He came to the bars and put his hands over mine in much the same way as Mike had done, but without Mike’s hesitation. “I’m sorry, Levi,” he said. He said ‘sorry’ a lot, and I understood the word. But if he was so sorry, why wasn’t he doing something about it?

“If you’re so fucking ‘sorry’,” I said angrily, “then why won’t you let me go?”

I tried to pull my hands away from his, but his were much bigger than mine – warm, with smoother skin than Mike’s but still rough compared with my own. He held me there and looked into my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, shaking his head. I didn’t know what to make of that, but the intensity of his look scared me. For the first time I began to worry about my own fate. I hadn’t done anything to humans had I? Well, apart from the drowned sailor, but that had been an accident. Anyway, they couldn’t know about that. No human could have survived that wreck, in those violent waves, so far from land.

What concerned me most was that I believed Erwin when he said he was sorry. Whatever he had planned for me, it was something he was doing against his natural feelings, and obviously something I wasn’t going to like. I pulled hard against his grip, and he let go of my hands. Turning away, he spoke to Hange in a low voice, and left without a backward glance.

 

I had no way of telling day from night in that dim place. The lantern burned all the time, and there was always one of them with me: Hange, Mike, or Moblit. Erwin seemed to have decided to stay away. Hange became much more determined in her attempts to teach me her language and to understand mine, and I was just as keen to learn. It seemed as though Erwin had no intention of letting me go, and I had no idea what would happen once the ship reached land. I needed knowledge, and that required communication.

They brought me fish once or twice a day, and I was soon able to explain my need for more fresh water than they’d been giving me. With a mix of verbal explanations and mimes that struck both Hange and myself as ridiculous and made us laugh, I managed to get a bucket for shit, and an agreement that my guards would walk away and turn their backs while I used it. Doing that entailed an awkward balancing act, but it was infinitely preferable to shitting in the water they expected me to live in. Afterwards I would retreat into my barrel and breathe underwater until the bucket was taken away. The smells produced by the body and its excretions aren’t something we have to worry about under the sea. I couldn’t understand how the humans could bear their own stench at times.

One day – or night – there was a storm. I was jubilant at first, hoping that the ship would sink and I would be free, but all that happened was that a lot of the water in my barrel sloshed out and soaked the straw, making for more unpleasant musty odours. When the storm abated, everyone seemed cheerful.

“What is it?” I asked Hange, when she appeared with my drinking water. “Why everyone –” I gave an exaggerated smile, and waved my arms about.

“Oh – we’re happy because we’ve seen gulls,” Hange said, miming flying and flapping her arms, making a squawking noise. I gave her a proper imitation of a gull and she clapped her hands.

“That’s good!” she cried. “Yes – gulls. We’re near land. We’ll be home soon!”

I understood enough.

“Home,” I repeated. “Where you are from?”

“Yes, home.” She looked at me, and then she shook her head, seeming a little sad. “Sorry. Not your home.”

I’d been waiting for a chance to ask about Erwin’s plans, and now I had the vocabulary and the opportunity. “Why?” I asked. “Why Erwin take me? What for? What is happen?”

“I can’t tell you,” Hange said. “But we will not hurt you. You are _precious_ , Levi.”

I frowned, impatient. “What is ‘precious’?”

“Rare. Valuable. Important.”

“I don’t know these words!”

“Erwin needs you,” Hange said.

“But _why_?” I asked.

Hange sighed. “We won’t hurt you,” she repeated, and would say no more.

 

 


	4. Erwin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Land ahoy!

I slept four more times, and we came to land. I saw nothing of it. I heard gulls crying, and felt the ship shudder and still, and I could sense that there was very little water beneath me, which made me nervous. There were bangings and clatterings, and many human voices, together with sounds I couldn’t recognize. The air smelt of fish – some fresh, some decomposing – mixed with human smells, and other powerful stenches I couldn’t identify. Hange came to my prison with the two sailors who usually brought my barrels of seawater, and I heard the clanging of what I had learned were keys. The lock turned and the door in the bars opened. The two sailors entered my prison, carrying the tools they usually used to open the barrels. Hange said, “Levi, we need to take you onto the land. We can’t let other people see you. We will hide you in the barrel, but it won’t be for long, I promise.”

When I realised what she meant, I tried to climb out of the water, but the two sailors were quick. They pushed me down into the water, and put the lid on the barrel. I heard thuds that reverberated through the water as they hammered the lid into place. I had never been trapped in such a tiny space before, and I hated it. There was no light at all. The barrel tilted, and I realised they were going to roll it – and me – off the ship. At first I tried to swim, but the barrel was nowhere near full of water, and I kept scraping myself against the wooden sides. Then I braced myself with my arms and tail, and was rolled over and over, having to breath using gills or lungs depending on where the water ended up, until I thought I was going to suffocate. Mercifully though, this part of the journey was short. Soon I found myself upright again, rather bruised and feeling queasy, but nothing more serious. As I began to breath normally again, I wondered whether I was on another ship. The barrel was rocking slightly, and I could hear a strange noise – a steady, repetitive plopping sound, like water dripping from the roof of a cave at low tide. I lost track of how long this went on. Eventually I slept. When I awoke it was because I’d stopped moving. The barrel tilted again, and I couldn’t help moaning as I was flung against the wood before I could brace myself once more. I was rolled for some distance, and then the motion stopped and the barrel was righted. At last I heard the banging that meant the lid was being removed. I surfaced, battered and furious, and found myself scowling at Erwin, who was looking at me with that same regretful expression I’d seen on his face before.

“I’m sorry, Levi,” he said again. I was beginning to wonder if that was all he knew how to say.

“Why?” I asked. “Why sorry? What will happen?”

He reached out and touched my cheek. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

“Yes. Shitty stupid barrel going –” I didn’t know the right words, so I mimed a rolling action with my hands.”

“Sorry,” Erwin said again.

“Stop with ‘sorry’!” I told him. “ _Sorry, sorry, sorry_ – but nothing new! _Shit_!”

 _Shit_ and _shitty_ were the worst human words I knew so far, but rather than looking shocked or impressed Erwin only smiled a bit sadly.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No – not… not big hurt.”

“We have to take you down there…” Erwin pointed, and I saw that the barrel stood near the top of a jagged descent into a dark place.

“Why?” I asked, trying not to show how afraid I felt. “I don’t want to…”

“No one can know you’re here,” Erwin said. “It will be like it was on the ship.”

“No!” I cried, attempting to climb out of the barrel. “No! I want – the sea – the sky! Not like the ship.”

“Only for a short time,” Erwin said. “I will show you the sky – I promise. But for now… I think it would hurt you if we tried to get the barrel down the stairs.”

“Stairs?” I asked.

“Those steps. Stairs,” he said, pointing at the jagged stones that led down into the dark.

“Not in the barrel,” I said firmly.

“Let me carry you?” Erwin asked, holding out his arms.

“Your Highness –” said one of the sailors, but Erwin silenced him with a look. I hesitated, but anything was better than the idea of bumping down that _stairs_ in the barrel, so I allowed Erwin to lift me out of the barrel and into his arms. No wonder the soldier called him _highness_ – he was very high. I was making him wet, but he said nothing about it, holding me close to his broad chest, one arm around my back and the other supporting the base of my tail. I leaned my head against his chest – I couldn’t help it – and looked up into his serious blue eyes. He really was ridiculously handsome. His body was warm and strong, and I suddenly wanted him very much - more than I had ever desired anyone except for Farlan. I wanted him so much that I almost forgot that I’d intended to kill him.

He carried me easily, and for the first time I really understood how useful legs must be on land. At the bottom of the stairs was a door like the one in my prison on the ship, made of iron bars. I sighed when I saw it, and Erwin said, “I will come back tonight. I’ll show you the sky. I know this must seem cruel. If I had any other choice…”

I didn’t understand all his words, but his voice was kind. He carried me into a room very like the one on the ship, but instead of a barrel this one contained a much larger wooden structure – also circular, with shallower sides. It was already filled with water, and I could smell that it was salt. A single lamp hanging on a hook just outside the room cast the only light.

“Shall I set you down in the tub?” Erwin asked.

“Not yet.” I reached up and touched his golden hair, and then I put my arms around his neck and kissed him. For a moment I thought he would drop me, or tell me no as Mike had done, but he didn’t – he kissed me back. It was strange kissing someone in the air rather than the water. Our lips caught and dragged against each other in a way I found somehow even more arousing than the easy slide of underwater kisses. When I ran my tongue along his lower lip he gave a tiny gasp and opened his mouth against mine. When our tongues touched I felt a jolt of intense desire that had my cock stiffening instantly. I tried to draw him closer, to make the kiss deeper, but he pulled away.

“Why not?” I asked. “I want you!”

He seemed confused – perhaps even surprised by his own actions. “That’s not – Is that physically possi -” he began, but then he saw that I was hard, and his eyes widened. Quickly he put me into the _tub_. I looked to see whether he was also aroused, but his clothes weren’t tight enough for me to be sure.

“I didn’t know you had – I mean, I thought you were half fish!” Erwin said.

“ _Fish!_ ” I exclaimed, insulted. “I am not a fish! I am man, like you, but _Mer_.”

“We have that word too,” Erwin said. “Merman. Mermaid. Men and women of the sea.”

I didn’t care much about learning new words at that moment. “You don’t want me?” I asked. “You don’t have that on land? When you put that –” I gestured to my still semi-erect cock – “inside, and –” I didn’t know any of the necessary words to describe fucking, so I mimed the appropriate thrusting action. Erwin looked very embarrassed. Even in the lamplight, I could see that his cheeks were stained red. Why were these humans so reluctant to do something that felt so good? “You don’t like it?” I asked, astonished.

“I – It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Erwin stuttered, looking flustered.

“Why? It _is_ good idea,” I told him. “It’s good. I want you, Erwin. You put it in me, I put it in you…” I smiled, to let him know I didn’t mind which way he wanted to do it, but he didn’t look pleased.

“Don’t you have any shame?” he said in an angry-sounding whisper.

“I don’t know that word ‘shame’,” I said. I held my arms out to him. “Come, Erwin. It will be good.”

Erwin made a strange sign, crossing his first two fingers in front of his eyes. “The chaplain was right,” he said. I had no idea what that meant, but it seemed that I wasn’t going to get any further for the time being. I could have shed scales in sheer frustration. His kiss had been so good – so full of promise.

Ah – there was still that. “You promised me!” I called, when he turned to go.

“What?” Erwin looked back at me, and it hurt to see how wary he was now, as though I had somehow betrayed him, when all I wanted was to share pleasure with him.

“You promised the sky,” I reminded him.

“I did.” He nodded, his jaw set. Erwin locked the door behind him, and turned to look at me before he went back up the stairs. “I keep my promises,” he said. And then he left me alone.

 

The tub was more comfortable than the barrel had been, but I was bored and frustrated alone in the prison. I’d always felt a general, mild pleasure from touching and sex play with those who asked me, but it had only been Farlan who had really excited me until I met Erwin. Perhaps it was just the irritation of being refused, but I found myself longing for Erwin – to feel him inside me, or me inside him. But I understood so little about humans! What if they were different from us? Perhaps they didn’t even fuck in the ways that we did? But Erwin had recognised my hard cock and what it meant, and he had kissed me like a man who knew what he was doing. There must be other reasons why he was so unwilling to do something he clearly wanted to do.

Time passed very slowly, and no one came. On the ship there had always been at least one person outside my prison. Mike and Hange were my favourites – always interesting; Hange passionate and desperate to learn and to teach; Mike quieter and more wary, and yet, it seemed to me, a gentle man with a kind nature and a love of laughter. Moblit was very serious and said little, but he drew beautiful pictures. He had been the one to help Hange to teach me words like _sea, sky, sun_ and _moon_ , by illustrating them in the book. Apart from the two sailors who brought my barrels of water, and one young boy who ran errands when required, I had seen no one else on the ship after my capture, other than Erwin.

Erwin. Ah – that beautiful bastard. Erwin disturbed and confused me. He had caught me and refused to let me go. He had given the order to his sailor to throw the harpoon at Farlan. His voice was too loud, and he was far too handsome. Sometimes it hurt me to look at his perfect face because it made it difficult to remember that I was supposed to hate him. He was often stern and serious, but at times, there was something of Mike’s humour in him too.

What puzzled me most was the way he was always telling me he was sorry for what he was doing, and yet it seemed that he was determined to carry on doing it. He had wanted to kiss me, even when he first saw me – I was sure of that – and he had been aroused by the kiss we had just shared. But something made him think that it was wrong to want me. Well, I didn’t want to desire him, either, but that couldn’t be helped. He drew me to him as surely as the anglerfish draw their prey into their jaws with their softly glowing lights, in the dark of the deep ocean – only, of course, he was much more beautiful than an anglerfish! I knew he was dangerous, but, idiot that I was, that only made me want him more. I told myself that this was the same stupid trait that had made me take the risk of climbing the side of the ship in the first place; I had to know, I had to take everything as a challenge. I tried to feel ashamed of myself for wanting him, but when I heard footsteps on the stairs after a long time alone in the new prison, I still hoped it would be him.

 

Erwin kept his promise. He entered carrying something over his arm, and something else that clanked like the keys to my prison on the ship, in the other hand. He approached my tub cautiously. He was more sensible than Hange – he knew I would probably be able to kill him if I could get him into the water.

“Levi,” he said, “I will show you the sky, if you let me put these on.” He held out a metal object – two iron rings joined by a length of chain.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“It’s so you can’t attack – so you can’t hurt me,” he said. “Get out of the tub.”

He wasn’t stupid. He knew how difficult it was for me to move, out of the water. But I longed to see the sky, so I obeyed him.

“Give me your hands,” he said.

I held out my hands to him, and he showed me how the metal rings opened. He fastened one around my wrist. I pulled back, alarmed. The iron was heavy and the edges rough.

“I don’t want,” I told him. “I will not hurt you.”

He stepped back. “Then no sky,” he said.

“You promised!” I complained.

“Yes. I will show you the sky. But you must put these on,” he told me, firmly. I knew he wasn’t going to change his mind. Reluctantly, I held out my other hand, and allowed him to lock the device shut.

“It’s bad,” I told him. “I don’t like it.” Even as I protested, though, I realised that he’d make a mistake. I was almost certain that, with a little effort, my narrow hands would slip through these restraints. I decided to keep that knowledge to myself for the time being.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s necessary.”

“ _Necessary_?” I asked.

“It means it has to happen,” he explained. “Now, I need to cover you with this.” He showed me the object draped over his arm. It was some kind of clothing like the humans wore – a long piece of fabric, with an extra part at the top to cover the head. “It’s a travelling cloak,” he said. “It’s warm, and it’s long enough to hide your tail.” I allowed him to drape the cloak around my shoulders. The material was a deep blue, and very soft. The chains between my wrists clanked as I reached to stroke it. “Good,” I said. “This is…. It’s… nice, under my hand.”

“It’s velvet,” he said.

“Velvet.” I repeated the strange word. Erwin smiled and arranged the cloak around me so that my tail was covered. “Let me put the hood up,” he said, bringing the top part of the cloak up to cover my head. That felt odd against my wet hair, but it was warm. Without another word, Erwin lifted me into his arms and carried me out of the prison and up the stairs.

I looked around at everything, amazed. It was night, and flickering lights shone brightly at intervals as Erwin carried me higher and higher up stairs that spiralled round and round like the inside of a whelk shell. The stairs went up inside a case of stone like the walls of a cave, but so regular I guessed they must have been made by human hands. But how could anyone make such a structure? How long would it take to move all these heavy stones?

“What is this? Where are we?” I asked.

“Shh,” cautioned Erwin. “Ask later.”

He carried me swiftly, never seeming to tire, through arches and along tunnels, and up more stairs. The walls were sometimes covered in pictures, brightly coloured, and even more detailed than the ones Moblit had drawn in Hange’s book. I didn’t understand most of the images they showed, but on one I saw a ship, and on another, three women – one young, one older, one old - embracing. I wanted to stop to look at these wonders, but Erwin continued until he reached a slab of wood set into a stone arch. He pushed on the wood with his shoulder and it moved. Then we were in a large, circular space containing all kinds of objects I didn’t recognize, and one I did. Hanging from the wall over a large rectangular structure was a piece of dark green cloth bearing the blue and silver gull-wing design we’d found after the shipwreck. I remembered Isabel draping it over her slender body, and I felt a longing to be back with her. But Erwin carried me forward to another archway and I clung to him, suddenly afraid, because this one opened onto a narrow strip of stone surrounded by a stone rail rather like the wooden one on the ship, but this one was far above the ground. I could feel my head spinning, and I turned my face towards Erwin’s chest, closing my eyes. Had I done something so wrong by showing him my desire for him that he was going to kill me now? If I fell from this height, I knew I would die.

I could feel Erwin’s heart beating hard and fast in his chest, but his voice was steady when he spoke.  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, carrying me out onto the stone platform. “I’m showing you the sky.”

“No!” I cried. “I don’t want –”

But then Erwin stopped walking, and said softly, “Look, Levi.”

I opened my eyes, and turned my head. It seemed as though we were standing in the sky. Beyond the stone rail, far below me, and stretching away to the limits of my vision, I saw the land, washed in silver moonlight. Above me the sky seemed to pulse with glittering stars. And in the distance, beyond some softly swelling undulations in the land that looked like static waves, I could see the ocean.

“Erwin,” I said, when I could speak, “it is – so…” I had no words of his language adequate to describe what I could see, and what I felt. It was beautiful, this _land_ , and at the same time alien, and terrifying. And yet I wanted to know it, with a fierce longing. I wanted to know _everything_.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Erwin said. “This is my land – my kingdom. It’s called Sina.”

“Sina,” I repeated. “What is _kingdom_?”

“This land,” Erwin replied. “The kingdom of Sina. My land.”

“ _Your_ land?” I asked, not understanding. “Not _your_ land. Not _my_ sea. Only – land. And sea.”

“No,” Erwin said. “This _is_ my land. I am the king of Sina.”

“What is _king_?” I asked.

Erwin smiled, but I thought he looked sad at the same time. “I don’t know how to tell you what it is,” he said. “The man who rules is the king. I say what happens here.”

I thought of our king beneath the waves. He told us what was forbidden, but had little impact on our lives otherwise. On the rare occasions that there was a dispute about something, he would resolve it. I supposed Erwin must have a similar role. “ _King_ ,” I said aloud, in the human tongue.

“Yes.” For some reason Erwin didn’t look happy about it. “King Erwin the Thirteenth.”

“You don’t like it?” I asked, looking out over the sliver-grey land. “You don’t like that you are king of Sina?”

Erwin looked down at me and he was so handsome that I longed to kiss him again. He was watching me with a strange mix of wariness and desire. If he was king, why couldn’t he do as he liked?”

“It’s my duty,” he said. “But it’s not always easy.”

“You can’t do what you want?” I asked him, trying to work out what _duty_ might mean.

“Not all the time, no.”

“But - only _you_ say what happens here?” I asked him,

“Yes,” he replied. He was looking at my mouth as though he wanted to devour me, and I knew that he ached to kiss me as much as I did him. Why was it so difficult for him? I wished I had more words to explain what I thought of his reluctance, but I did my best with what I’d learned: “Some things no one says. Some things happen on their own. Some things _have_ to happen…” I struggled to remember the word he’d used for that, down in the prison, relieved when it came back to me. “It’s – _necessary_ ,” I told him, looking up into his hungry, guilty eyes.

“Necessary?” Erwin asked.

“Tch,” I said, impatiently, wondering why he was bothering to question something so obvious, when his whole body was yearning towards mine. “Yes, Erwin! _Necessary_.”

I knew that I’d made him understand, when he held me tighter against him, his eyes only widening a little in surprise as I slipped my hands free of the iron restraints. They clattered to the floor, and I reached up to touch his face, running the fingers of my other hand through his golden hair and pulling him down into our mutually longed-for, inevitable kiss.


	5. Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay. I've given up making promises about the speed of updates - there's too much going on at the moment for me to be sure when I'll be able to write. What I can say is that I intend to finish this story, but it may take quite a while. 
> 
> Thank you very much to everyone who has read, kudosed and commented. It's much appreciated.  
> Chapter warning - discussion of myths surrounding masturbation.

Erwin carried me to the large structure beneath the green cloth with the gull wing design, and laid me down on top of it. It was very soft, giving beneath my weight until it caught me; a strange sensation, a bit like floating. He lay beside me and leaned down to kiss me again. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. Although I knew he’d been reluctant to kiss me at all, once he’d made up his mind to it he held nothing back. I’d never been kissed so deeply or with such heat. At first I thought that maybe it was just the difference between kissing underwater and in the air – the more immediate friction and the unfamiliar warmth without cool water to carry it away – but as we kept kissing I understood that it was more than that – that there was something between us that neither of us could, or wanted to, resist.

Erwin’s lips were soft, but his face was a little rough in places – spikier than Mike’s beard had felt, as though hairs were trying to push through his skin. It was strange, but I found that I like the coarseness of it against my lips and my tongue. Without water every touch was heightened, and the contrasting textures of the different hairs on his face fascinated me. We grow little hair on our bodies under the water, but humans seemed to be covered in it. Erwin let me explore his face with my mouth – the almost-beard that scratched against my skin – the thick, smooth hair of his eyebrows – the almost invisible hairs on his earlobes, as soft as the ‘velvet’ of the cloak he had wrapped me in to carry me to this place. Finally I kissed his mouth again, pressing my tongue against his, and it felt so good that I was hard very quickly. I put my hand between his legs and found that he was hard too; I could feel the shape of his cock under his clothes. I squeezed. Erwin made a hissing sound, but from the way his head was thrown back and his eyes closed, I assumed that he liked it.

“What do you want?” I asked, since I had no preference as long as we both ended up satisfied. “You in me? Me in you?”

He opened his eyes at that. “No,” he said, looking very serious. “Just touching. Hands. Nothing else.”

“Why?” I asked him, confused. It was obvious that we were ready for each other. His words made no sense to me. My cock was aching for him and I was sure he felt the same. What was the point in doing less than we both wanted to?

“I’m a man, and you’re – well, you’re male, anyway,” he said.

“Yes?” I was beginning to wonder whether there was something wrong with Erwin’s mind, for all that he claimed to be a _king_.

“It’s not allowed,” Erwin said.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

“Two males doing that – it’s not… The church says it’s a sin.”

“I don’t know these words, _church_ , _sin_.”

“Well, a church is –”

“I don’t _want_ to know these words. Erwin…” I stroked his cock again, feeling the heat of it through his clothes. It was big – bigger than mine, or Farlan’s – and beautifully hard. I kissed him, and he only hesitated for a moment before he reached for my cock, too. We kissed and stroked each other, and I found the way his clothes unfastened and got my hand on his hard, hot flesh at last. He moaned - it was clear that he enjoyed the sensation of what we were doing – but his expression was strange. It reminded me of the look Isabel got when she’d been caught taking something without asking. I didn’t understand why he would feel that way about doing something that hurt no one, and that would only give us both pleasure. There was no reason not to play like this, unless –

An unwelcome thought struck me. I let go of him, worried by his apparent reluctance to fuck. “What is it, Erwin? Do you have a –” I sighed in frustration, not knowing the word for ‘mate’. “Is there – you should be with a person for making –” Hange had told me the human word for children, but in the heat of the moment I couldn’t remember it – “Small ones,” I improvised. “You have a female for that?”

“Oh – no,” Erwin replied, seeming to understand. “No, I’m not married. Not yet.”

“So, then.”

“Are there no rules under the sea?” Erwin asked, looking into my eyes. “Don’t you have laws? Taboos?”

I reached up for him, running my fingers through his soft golden hair. “More words I don’t know. Too many shitty words. Kiss me. We can do hands, if you won’t do anything else.” I kissed him, and then pushed him away. “Lie down,” I ordered. He hesitated, but then lay back on the soft platform beneath us, watching me with a strange expression on his handsome face – half longing, half as though he was afraid I might bite. I propped myself on one elbow, looking down at him, and ran my free hand lightly over his cock which was still mostly hidden by his clothes, and still very hard. “Show me,” I said.

His eyes widened, and for a moment I thought he would refuse, but then he pushed the material of his clothes down his legs to reveal his cock properly. It was beautiful; big and gently curved, coral pink, the smooth skin of the head so taut that it shone with a soft gleam like mother-of-pearl. At the base, where I had blue-black scales, he grew more hair, tightly curled, golden brown. I couldn’t help it; I licked my lips.

“ _Only_ hands?” I sighed. “I want to kiss you there.” I ran my fingertips lightly along that firm, inviting length. Erwin’s back arched and he made a strange, stifled gasping sound as if I was hurting him.

“ _Can_ I kiss you here?” I asked, leaning over him, my mouth so close to the head of his cock that I knew he must be able to feel the heat of my breath against it. I looked up into his blue eyes, and saw that his cheeks were almost as flushed as his cock. He was watching me with a kind of tense desperation. I held his gaze as I pressed my lips against the pearl-smooth skin, taking his silence as permission. Erwin shuddered as though no one had ever kissed him there before. Maybe no one ever had?

I licked him – how could I resist? He made a strangled noise, but he didn’t tell me to stop, so I closed my mouth around the head of his cock and sucked in the way that always used to make Farlan thrash around in the water – the way Farlan and the others had used to make me feel good. Erwin’s hips lifted and his fists clenched at his sides as I licked and sucked him. I wanted him to do something – at least put his hands in my hair, or touch my cheek while I played with him – but he seemed too absorbed by what I was doing to him to make any voluntary movement at all. His obvious excitement aroused me though, and I sucked harder, pressing my tongue against his hot, smooth skin and working his shaft with my hand. He was panting now, his head thrown back, his jaw set and his eyes squeezed shut. His whole body was tense – I could see the muscles in his strong legs tightening – his toes curling downwards. I was just wondering whether he was aroused enough to change his mind about fucking me, when he gave a sudden wordless shout and came in my mouth. I swallowed, taken by surprise at how quickly he’d come. In the sea I usually took my mouth away before the end to let the water wash everything away, but Erwin’s taste wasn’t unpleasant, only a little bitter. Besides, the thought of staining the rich material covering the platform beneath us was disgusting.

Erwin was looking down at me, his lips parted, his eyes dazed. I wriggled up to lie beside him, and kissed his mouth softly. He didn’t recoil from his taste on my tongue as I thought he might – he kissed me back, deep and hard. “Levi,” he said, still sounding breathless, when the kiss ended – “Levi!”

“You see, Erwin? It’s good.”

“Yes – it’s good.” He sighed. “It _is_ good…”

I pressed myself against him, kissing his neck and wrapping my tail around his leg so that I could pull myself closer and let him feel my hardness against his thigh. I smiled at him encouragingly, but he didn’t take the hint.

“You can touch _me_ now,” I prompted, when he didn’t move.

That look appeared on his face again – the doubtful look. I bit the side of his neck in sheer frustration, but I did it gently. “What are you scared of?” I asked him.

“I’m not scared,” he retorted automatically, his pride wounded.

“So…?” I took his hand and placed it on my cock, closing his fingers around it under my own. “Only with your hand, like this,” I told him. There would be time to teach him the rest. “Like you do to yourself.”

He tried to loosen his grip on me and frowned, looking quite angry. “What do you mean? I don’t – Why would you think that?”

I stared at him trying to work out what he was talking about. He’d obviously misunderstood me. “No,” I said, “Nothing bad. Just – like when you touch yourself. When you do it to yourself.” I tried to make him move his hand on my cock, but he pulled back almost violently and sat up.

“Erwin? What’s wrong?”

“You’re wrong! This – this is wrong. What you’re talking about – it’s dirty. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

I shook my head, wondering what he thought I’d meant. “No! You don’t understand. I only mean… ah – it’s hard to say…” My lack of human vocabulary was hindering me again, just when I least wanted it to. I couldn’t bear the idea that Erwin might reject me because of a stupid misunderstanding. What kind of a weird act did he think I’d been asking him to perform?

“When you are alone,” I explained, “and you want – you want to do that thing you just did in my mouth? The way you touch yourself, then? That’s how I want you to touch me. You see? Nothing bad.”

Erwin was staring at me. He looked disgusted. I couldn’t understand why. How could I make myself clearer? I reached for his hand again, and kissed his fingers. He allowed that much, so I tried to draw his hand towards my cock again, but he resisted. “Just touch me,” I told him. “That’s all. I want you to touch me.”

He pulled away, although less angrily than before. He lay back on the soft platform and put his hand over his eyes as though he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“I should never have given in to this,” he said. “You’re not human, and you don’t understand our morals and our rules. What you were describing – the church says that’s a sin, too. It’s something young men do, perhaps, when they have no self-control, but to continue to behave like that as a fully-grown adult – No. It weakens a man – saps his energy. And it can make you go blind.”

I couldn’t follow everything he said, but it sounded like shit to me. “What is ‘blind’?” I asked.

“When you can’t see.” He lowered his hand and looked at me. “I’m sorry, Levi. It’s not your fault. You’ve had no one to teach you proper behaviour.”

I was still grappling with the extraordinary idea he’d just presented to me. “Touching yourself makes you – so you can’t _see_?”

“Yes.”

“Oh!” Well, no wonder he was worried! But I wasn’t asking him to touch himself, only me. He’d let me touch him – and more. I didn’t understand.

“Only with your own hands is bad?” I asked. “But, like I did to you – that’s not bad?”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have let you do that, either.”

“But you can see.”

“Yes – it doesn’t happen all at once. It’s… if it becomes a habit. If you do it too many times.”

“How much times?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“But – I do it all the time. Under the sea, we all do. We can see. It must be only humans.”

He looked disturbed at that. “I – don’t know.”

“You can still touch me,” I told him happily. “I won’t go – _blind_.”

“I can’t. It isn’t only that. It’s all of it. Me – with you. We can’t do this again. It’s wrong.”

“No!” He was making me angry, but I felt sorry for him at the same time. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure he must be confused. “I think – I think you don’t know what these people mean. How can it make you blind? How can it be wrong? Do you _know_ someone who went blind from this?”

“Not personally, no – but it’s well documented, I’m sure. All the physicians say that’s what happens.”

“I don’t know those – what they are – but what they say is wrong. For Mer, anyway. Maybe not for humans. It’s… sad, if you won’t do any of it. I want you.”

Erwin looked away. “I – want you, too. But I can’t have you.” He sighed. “I’ve been very weak.”

I made one last attempt to win him around, although my cock had already gone soft. “Can’t you be ‘weak’ for a bit more?” I asked him, half joking. “If _you_ don’t touch me, maybe I’ll… go blind?”

He _almost_ smiled at that – I could see it in his eyes. But his fear of doing something ‘bad’ won out. “I’m sorry, Levi. I should take you back before one of the servants sees us here. You stay on the bed – I’ll get the cloak and carry you back downstairs.”

“ _Bed_ ,” I repeated quietly, looking down at the soft platform beneath me. Huh. It would have been fun to spend more time with Erwin on this _bed_. The human world was very strange – and very frustrating.

 

Erwin left me in my tub in the cell, with a regretful, backwards glance. I heard him say something quietly to the guards outside, and then he was gone. I sulked for a while, turning lazy circles in the water and wishing I had more space, thinking about Erwin and his strange beliefs. What kind of world did these humans live in to make them so afraid? Whatever he’d said, he _was_ afraid, that much was obvious, but I couldn’t work out what it was that frightened him. He was supposed to be king – everyone did his bidding as far as I could see, and the kingdom he’d shown me from his window stretched for miles to the sea – but he wasn’t free in any sense that I could understand. He’d been told things – things I was almost sure were not true – that made him ashamed of himself and of wanting to follow perfectly natural and harmless desires. Why?

Under the sea, we feared nothing but what could kill us – sharks, orca, fish that could sting and paralyze. We dealt with those by learning to hunt and to swim fast. We’d been taught to stay away from humans because they, too, could kill us. We were taught that it was right to share food with those who were too young or too old to hunt, and to share our time and our bodies with our friends. Those were our only fears and our only rules. But this world was much more complex. Erwin wanted me – he’d said so, and I could feel it in the way he kissed me - the way he’d reacted to the things I’d done to him. But for some unknown reason, he felt he had to deny himself – and me – that kind of pleasure. As for what he’d said about going ‘blind’ – I found it very hard to believe that humans would be so physically different from us that such a thing could be true. I needed to talk to Hange – she was good at explaining the human world.

I leaned on the edge of the tub and called to the guards, “Hey! I want to see Hange!”

“Hange’s busy,” a voice replied. The bastard couldn’t even be bothered to look into my cell.

“If you tell her it’s me, she will come,” I told him.

“She’s _busy_!” he shouted. Then I heard him muttering to his companion in a low voice – “Yeah, I know. But she’s busy with the _other_ one – getting it ready.”

“Shh,” a second voice whispered.

“Why? That thing can’t understand more than a couple of words, can it? And even if it tried to escape, how would it get up the steps?”

“They say there are selkies…” the second voice replied. “Seals in the water, human on land.”

“Maybe there are – but this one’s Mer. A fish out of water ain’t goin’ nowhere, and that’s a fact.” The first guard laughed at his own wit.

I was too distracted by the mention of _the other one_ to focus on being angry at his words. Was it possible that they’d caught Farlan and brought him here, too? Annoyingly, the guard was right – escape would be next to impossible. But I had to find out the identity of this _other one_. If I could only lure the guard close enough…

“Get Hange!” I shouted.

“Shut up, or I’ll come and make you!” the guard yelled back.

“You can’t hurt it,” the second guard muttered. “Orders. _Unharmed_ – remember?”

“Yeah – but I can gag it, can’t I? If it keeps making that infernal racket.”

“I wouldn’t risk it. Its teeth looked sharp to me.”

“Get Hange!” I shrieked, using the voice that carries long distances under water.

“What the fuck?” the first guard shouted. He stumbled into the cell, his hands clamped over his ears. “Shut up!” he bellowed.

I smiled at him, showing him just how sharp my teeth were. “Hange!” I screamed.

“Right,” he snarled, taking a step closer. I stretched out in the water, poised, my hands on the edge of the tub. Two more steps would bring him in range…

He drew a knife and moved forward cautiously. I waited. He took one more step, and I brought my tailfins down flat on the water, propelling myself up and out of the tub. He gave a shout of alarm. I caught his knife hand and twisted, grabbing the knife when he dropped it with a moan of pain. Then I threw him into the water and hauled myself back in before he could clamber out. I wrapped my tail tight around his legs, and set the knife blade against his throat. “Tell your friend to come in.”

“B - Bart!” the guard cried, his voice trembling now, “come here!”

The second man entered the room, his thin face pale.

“Good,” I said. “Now – tell me: who is ‘the other one’?”

“That – that’s Bart,” my hostage stammered. “He’s just a guard, like me. Please – don’t -”

“No, shitty bastard! Not him. _The other one_. You said to him Hange is with ‘the other one’. One like me?”

“You misunderstood. I didn’t say that. You don’t know our language!” He squirmed eel-like in my grip. I shook him hard.

“No. I _understand_. Tell me.” When he still hesitated, I pressed the blade harder against his throat.

“If you kill me –” he began.

“If I kill you, _what_?” Fear for Farlan made me vicious. “If I kill you, they still won’t hurt me. Erwin _needs_ me.” He went still then, and I knew it was true.

“There was another one,” he said, “when they caught you. But it was injured. It –”

“What?” I demanded. A horrible, cold fear gripped my heart.

“It died!” I could feel the guard trembling in my grasp.

I wanted to kill him. But I needed to know what was true, and what was lies. How many lies had they told me – Hange, Mike, Moblit – and that beautiful, fucked-up bastard, Erwin?

“Bart,” I said, my voice cold. Bart started at me, terrified. “Get me Hange, or this one will die.”

Bart rushed from the cell. I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and then silence. My captive held still, breathing shallowly. I blinked hard to stop tears from falling. Was Farlan dead? And had Erwin kissed me – had he let me lie with him and do all that we had done - knowing all the time that Farlan was dead?

If so, I would never forgive him.


	6. Sorry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a sad chapter - things will improve for Levi next time. ACWNR spoilers. Warning for canon character death.

Hange arrived looking flustered, with Moblit, and the guard, Bart, at her heels. I shook my hostage a little, just to show that I was serious, and pressed the blade of the knife harder against his throat.

“Levi!” Hange cried, “Please, don’t hurt that man! I’ll explain – it was an accident – it’s not that guard’s fault!”

I didn’t understand all her words, but I made out enough to realise that the guard hadn’t been lying.

“I want to see,” I told her. “Take me there.”

Hange was about to reply when Erwin strode into the room looking very serious. “Levi, let him go.”

“Did you _know_ about this?” I snarled at Erwin, my grip on the hostage only tightening.

If Erwin had hesitated or tried to evade my question I would have hated him forever from that moment, but he looked me straight in the eye and nodded firmly. “I did.”

“And you didn’t tell me? You took me to your room –”

I stopped talking, seeing the sudden panic in Erwin’s eyes. Hange and Moblit were looking from me to him, and I understood that he was horrified at the idea of them finding out about what we had done. Even as furious as I was, I found that I couldn’t betray him without knowing the whole truth. “You told me about the human world,” I finished, instead of what I’d been intending to say. “You pretended to be – to be thinking about what was _right_ \- when all the time you knew!”

“I’m sorry,” Erwin said, as he always did, and I don’t know why, but, as always, I believed him. He _was_ sorry – deeply sorry – but whatever course he was set on, nothing would change it.

I released the guard, who clambered out of the tub and staggered away towards the door, clutching the place on his throat where my knife had cut him.

“Take me to see.”

Erwin took a step towards me, but I couldn’t stand the thought of him touching me now. “Not you. Him.” I pointed at Moblit, who looked at Hange anxiously.

“I won’t hurt _you_ ,” I told him, glancing at Erwin.

Hange nodded, and Moblit lifted me out of the water, almost stumbling as he tried to walk. “Ugh - you’re heavier than you look,” he grunted.

I tried not to think about the way Erwin had carried me so easily up all those stairs to his room. I tried to push away the memory of what had followed.

With Hange leading the way, Moblit carried me up the stairs outside my cell, across a pebbled open space, and through another door into a long, narrow room with more doors all along it. Hange opened one of these, and Moblit carried me into a large, dimly lit room containing all kinds of weird objects I couldn’t name. There was a disgusting smell in the air – something sharp in my nostrils and at the back of my throat. In the middle of the room was a huge container – a kind of glass bottle like the ones we sometimes used to find on the seabed after shipwrecks, but as tall as Erwin. It was filled with a murky green liquid, and floating inside it –

Not Farlan. Isabel.

Her red hair spread out from her too-pale face like the searching fingers of anemones. The red-gold of her scales gleamed through the dim liquid. Her eyes were open, but it was obvious that she was dead. There was a pain in my chest, and tears in my eyes again. I writhed in Moblit’s arms, forcing him to drop me, and hauled myself over to Isabel. I pressed my fingers against the cold glass of the bottle.

“Isabel!”

“You knew her?” Hange asked.

“Her name is Isabel. She - was like my – ” but I had no name for what she was to me in their language. “She was like –”

Not quite a sister, nor a daughter, something more than a friend – my love for Isabel had elements of all those things. I didn’t know their words for any of them, and I had no will to try to explain to those murdering bastards. I leaned my forehead against the glass. There were a lot of tears now, and I didn’t seem to be able to stop them.

No one said anything. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and knew it was Erwin’s. I wanted to launch myself at him and rip his throat out with my teeth. I wanted to curl against his chest and feel his arms around me. I couldn’t move. All I could do was slump against the glass, defeated by the pain losing Isabel. Tears made small dark circles on the red stone of the floor. Erwin’s hand was warm and heavy on my shoulder. He waited.

“How di – ” Something was wrong with my voice. I tried again. “How did it happen? How did she die?”

“We don’t know,” Hange said softly. “We found her after we docked – after we got here. She was clinging to the anchor; her tail was wrapped around it. She must have climbed up after we caught you, but we used the anchor as a drag during the storm… We didn’t know she was there. We didn’t mean to kill her, Levi.”

I didn’t understand all of Hange’s explanation, but enough. Enough.

“She followed me.”

“We think so.”

“In the storm – if she was – was pulled behind the ship –” I remembered the near suffocation I’d felt being rolled from the ship in the barrel. “Why didn’t she let go?”

“She must have been there for days before the storm. She was probably weak. She would have been in the sun all day if she’d climbed onto the anchor… When the ship is under full sail, it goes very fast. Perhaps she was afraid that if she let go she wouldn’t be able to keep up…” Hange’s voice was full of sorrow. I believed she was sorry, just like Erwin. I wanted to strangle her.

“She should have left me! She should have let me go!”

“She must have loved you very much,” Hange said.

Something inside me hurt so sharply I found myself gasping. Isabel was dead. Farlan was either dead or very badly wounded, or he would never have allowed Isabel to follow the ship alone. I thought of Isabel’s laughter, the way she could never keep still for a moment, her arms around me, and her little chin digging into my shoulder where Erwin’s hand was now. I shook him off, anger helping to blunt the sharp edge of sorrow.

“Why this?” I demanded, turning to glare at them, scorning the pity in their eyes. “Why is she here, like this, in this… this _thing_ , for everyone to see? She should be in the sea! _We_ should –”

“I’m sorry,” said Erwin, for the thousandth time. I opened my mouth to scream at him - but I closed it again. Suddenly I understood - I knew that I couldn’t accuse him, because I was sorry, too – me – the stupid fuck who had never been really sorry about anything in my life until that moment, when it was too late. I was sorry, and it meant nothing, because Isabel and Farlan were dead.

It was all my fault. I was the one who never listened, who did whatever the hell I wanted, who always had to _know_. Isabel – Farlan – they’d begged me not to go to the surface, not to go near the ship…

My fault. I still had no idea what Erwin’s plans were, but I remembered the look of sheer, astonished relief in his eyes when he’d first seen me. I was sure he hadn’t come hunting us – I’d simply presented him with an opportunity, and he’d taken it. I was the one who had risked their lives. They had paid for my arrogance.

“Levi…” Erwin said.

I looked at him, feeling weirdly calm – or perhaps numb was closer to it. “What do you want us for, Erwin?” I asked. “Why is Isabel in _that_? Why are you keeping me here?”

Erwin sighed. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.” He turned to Moblit and Hange, giving orders in a low voice. Then he knelt next to me, and put his hand on my shoulder again. “I promise I won’t keep anything from you again,” he said. “Allow me to carry you back to my room. I’ll explain why we brought Isabel here – why we can’t let you go back to the sea.”

I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t resist when he lifted me into his arms. As we left the room, I looked back at the monstrous jar. I knew that Isabel was gone, but it still hurt to see her body floating there, still beautiful, her golden scales and her wild red hair still bright.

 

In Erwin’s room the cloth that draped the platform he’d called a _bed_ was still rumpled from where we’d been lying on it. Erwin saw me looking at it, and a faint flush came to his cheeks.

“Hange and Moblit are going to move your tub up here,” Erwin said. “I don’t want to keep you in that cell.”

I looked at him. “You know I could kill you in your sleep.”

“Yes. I’m trusting that you won’t. You couldn’t hope to move fast enough to escape afterwards. I’ll put you on this chair for now.”

The _chair_ was a wooden frame, like the stools on the ship, but with a high back part and supports at the sides. It was covered with more of the material the cloak had been made from – _velvet_ – only this time in a deep red colour. Erwin placed me carefully on the chair. I could sit quite comfortably, my tailfins spread out on the shiny wooden floor.

“Tell me,” I said.

Erwin paced from one side of the room to the other, frowning. He stopped in front of me, then drew up a stool with an elaborately patterned cloth covering on top, and sat down, very close.

“I’ve never wished any harm to you or your kind,” he began. “Please, Levi, believe that.”

“I do.”

“This world – the land, I mean – is made up of many kingdoms. Ours is a very small one. Is it like that, under the sea?”

“ _Kingdoms_ are like this - like Sina – the bit of land where one king says what happens?”

“Yes.”

“Under the sea, there is only one king.”

“ _One_ king?” Erwin looked surprised.

“Yes. One king. They say there are other Mer in other – parts? – other parts of the sea, but we don’t see them.”

“I see. But if they exist, they could have kings?”

I didn’t understand where this was getting us. “Yes – could – maybe. We don’t know.”

“That must make things peaceful,” Erwin said, looking wistful.

“I don’t know _peaceful_.”

“Oh! Well – without fighting. Without killing.”

“We kill sharks, if they attack us. We kill what wants to kill us.”

“But – you don’t kill each other?”

“No!” I was shocked by what his question implied, and I couldn’t hide it. “You – you _do_?”

“Yes. It happens a lot.”

“Why?”

Erwin got the intense look I’d seen on his face before, when he was considering something important.

“Levi – what would happen, under the sea, if another Mer tried to take something from you?”

“Isabel… Isabel took things all the time. But she gave them back, or we said she could have them.”

“Yes, but not like that. What if you had – a fish, say, and there were no more fish, and someone wanted to take it from you?”

I shook my head. “There are always more fish. I would tell them – _get your own fish, don’t take mine_.”

“But if there weren’t enough fish?”

“Then I would –” I struggled for a word. I made a slicing motion with my hand. “I would give them part of mine.”

Erwin sighed. “So – you don’t know what a war is.”

I shook my head.

“No,” Erwin said, “– I was thinking aloud. I can see that you don’t. A war is when a lot of people fight – try to kill each other – to get something they need that the other people have. Or, sometimes, just to get something they _want_.”

“That’s stupid.” I didn’t like the ideas Erwin was putting into my head. Humans might kill other humans – who knew what humans were capable of? But not Mer. Not –”

“ _Imagine_ ,” Erwin said, “Try to see in your mind,” he tapped his head – “What would happen if there were no more fish? No more fish in all the sea. You have the last fish, and someone wants to take it from you. If you don’t stop him, he will take it.”

I looked away. “Then I give it to him, and catch _orca_ ,” I replied, but I was being deliberately obtuse and Erwin knew it. I’d never thought about these things before, and they disturbed me. I felt a strange, uneasy sensation in my gut just imagining what Erwin was describing. Me with the last fish. Farlan wanting…

No. If Farlan wanted it, I would give it to him. But someone else – someone I never swam with…

It frightened me that I instantly knew what I would do.

“ _War_ ,” I said, as he had done. “Erwin – is there someone – someone who wants to take something from you?”

Erwin looked at me, and saw that I understood. “Yes. Across the sea, is a land much bigger than this one. We call it an empire. Its ruler – a kind of king we call an emperor – wants my kingdom for himself.”

“Why?”

“Ah. A lot of reasons. Some political, some religious… But mainly because we have gold and tin, rich farmland, good grazing.”

I couldn’t follow half of what he said, and many of the words meant nothing to me. I shook my head. “I don’t know those things. But – this _kind of king_ –”

“His name is Titus. Emperor Titus.”

“Emperor Titus. He wants your land? Because of these things it has, and his land does not?”

“Yes.”

“I understand. But why do you need Isabel, even now she is dead? Why do you need me?”

There was a thudding, rumbling sound coming from outside the door to Erwin’s room, along with a lot of angry talking. I recognized the word ‘shit’, in Hange’s distinctive voice, and heard muttered curses in Moblit’s.

Erwin rose from the stool and went to open the door. With some difficulty Hange and Moblit managed to roll the heavy wooden tub into the room on its side; the door was barely wide enough. They set it down on the floor and stood beside it panting. Erwin looked at them.

“Suppose we’d better get the water then,” said Moblit after a short silence. Hange seemed as though she was about to add something, but then she looked at me and changed her mind. When they’d gone, closing the door quietly behind them, Erwin walked to the window and stood looking out over his lands. On the distant horizon I could see the thin, silvery line of the ocean, and longed for it. Farlan was almost certainly dead or he would have followed Isabel, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut off every bit of hope that he might have survived.

“Emperor Titus has a huge army,” Erwin said. “Soldiers - men who fight – who kill other men, to get him what he wants. During my father’s reign he sent raiding ships to our coast, until we agreed to send him gold to keep away. Titus called it tribute money. He was fighting other wars with nearer lands in those days. Now he has taken all the land on his side of the sea, and he’s started to look across the ocean towards Sina. When we found you, we were on our way back from negotiations – um – a meeting with him on neutral territory – an island… You won’t understand most of these words, but –”

“You went to talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“And he didn’t kill you?”

“No. No – he can’t afford to provoke all the kingdoms on this side of the ocean by starting a war - not yet. For now he just wants us to give him more gold. But the amount he wants will cripple us – and his demands are only going to grow. In the end he will force us to refuse the tribute, and then he’ll have a reason to invade us.”

Erwin crossed the room again and sat on the stool in front of me. The intense expression was back, burning in his eyes. It half repelled and half attracted me. I couldn’t look away.

“Then what will you do? If you fight, he will take your land?”

“Yes. We can’t stand against his army. But we have ships. If I can stall him, I can build more ships. If I can make him wait long enough, we might have a chance to defeat him at sea.”

“And making him wait – that is something to do with why you have done this to Isabel – to me?”

Erwin nodded gravely. “Emperor Titus is a collector. One of the ways he likes to show his power – to make others envy and fear him – is to possess what no one else has. At his imperial palace he has a room full of curiosities from the four corners of the globe. He has a famous garden divided into separate areas when he keeps exotic animals of all kinds… and he prides himself on owning a house slave from every known land.”

I hadn’t been able to follow most of what Erwin had said, and I was sure I must have misunderstood a lot of it, but I thought of Isabel’s liking for bright things: gold from wrecks, pearls and shining shells, pieces of coloured glass.

“I don’t understand,” I told Erwin, although I was starting to feel afraid that I did.

“Levi, I need to convince Titus that I have something so rare, so precious, that he will be prepared to forego the tribute, and wait, if he thinks there’s a chance of obtaining it. If my plan works, it will give me the money and time I need to build ships.”

Hange had used that word – _precious_. She had used it about me.

“No,” I said. “I won’t go.”

“Not you – not if I can build my ships in time. But I will have to send him Isabel, in the end.”

“Isabel is dead!”

“He’ll still want her. No one has ever caught a Mer, dead or alive. Sailors have claimed sightings of them; fishermen tell stories of pulling up their nets to find Mermaids in them – but nothing has ever been proved until now. As soon as I saw you leaning on the rail of the ship, I knew I had a chance to save my kingdom. Levi, it is true that I was thinking of offering you to him at first. But now we have Isabel, I don’t need to.”

“Why would he want her _now_?” The idea was bizarre and repulsive. “Dead is dead. She should be in the sea, so the sea can – can give her back.”

“What do you mean, ‘give her back’?” Erwin asked.

I searched for words to explain The Return to him. “When you give ones who die to the sea, and the sea makes them water and –” I remembered Hange’s lessons on the ship, what she’d said after I’d stripped a fish clean of its flesh – “water and _bone_. If Isabel is not given back to the sea, how can she become anything else?”

Erwin shook his head. “I want to know more about what you believe, Levi, but for now I’m afraid Isabel can’t become anything else. I need her to be what she is – a miracle that could save my kingdom.”

I didn’t know ‘believe’ or ‘miracle’, but I understood that Erwin wasn’t going to let Isabel Return. I felt the ache behind my eyes that seemed to signal tears, but I struggled against it, breathing hard, and succeeded in holding them back. “What will you do with her?”

“I need people to see her. The liquid Hange used will keep her as she is for a long time – many years. I will display her in that jar in the throne room – well guarded, of course. I need reports of the Mer of Sina to spread across the lands until Emperor Titus hears them. He will send an ambassador to see if it’s true, I’m sure of that. And then we can begin negotiations that I’m hoping will take months.”

“Then you will make – _build_ \- your ships?”

“Yes.”

“What about me?”

“I can’t let you go, Levi.” I noticed that Erwin wasn’t saying he was sorry any more. Perhaps, like me, he’d realized the pointlessness of that word.

“You will keep me here?”

“Yes. You’re my insurance. I will have to give him Isabel in the end, but if I need more time I can make a new deal using you. I can’t let you go until we’ve defeated Emperor Titus at sea, or made him too afraid of our naval power – our ships - that he won’t risk an invasion. If we succeed at that, Sina will be safe for a long time.”

“How long?”

“I’m hoping we’ll be safe for years. And in that time, I aim to try to persuade the other kingdoms to unite our forces – bring our armies together so that –”

“No – how long do I have to stay here? I need the sea. It's - necessary.”

“You can’t go back to the sea, Levi. I can’t risk it. I need to keep you safe, and secret. If Titus finds out I have a living Merman, he won’t care about Isabel.”

“But people know! Hange, Moblit, Mike… All those men on the ship…”

“No one will believe sailors’ tales. Sailors are always _claiming_ to have caught Mer. We’ll say that we caught a living Mer, but it died. Then, even if rumours persist, everyone will assume that the one we caught was Isabel. The guards can be trusted – Mike picked them. But you’re right – if you stay here, servants will see you eventually and rumours will get out. That’s why I’m sending you away.”

I wanted to hate Erwin for what he’d done to Isabel and me, but I could see that he believed he was acting for the sake of his kingdom. And, in spite of everything, I didn’t want to be separated from him.

“Where will you send me?”

“I have a hunting lodge – a kind of house - far east of here, in the mountains. It’s near a deep lake – a lot of water. You could swim there – no one would see you. I’m assuming you can survive in fresh water?”

“Fresh water?”

“The kind you drink? Without salt?”

I thought of the sweet water currents we sometimes swam through near the mouths of great rivers. “Yes. Any water.”

“Good. Hange thought so. She had a word for it – I’ve forgotten. Fish that can survive in salt or fresh water.”

“I told you – I am _not_ a fish!”

“I know, Levi. You are a man, like me, only Mer. I know. And I would set you free, if I could.”

“I think you would.” I couldn’t help reaching out to touch his face. He didn’t stop me. “Will you come there – to this house by this _lake_?”

“When I can. Hange’s going with you, with Moblit and some trusted guards. She wants to find out more about the Mer, if you will answer her questions.”

I didn’t reply to that. It seemed to me that it might be safer for the Mer if humans knew nothing about us. I took my hand away from Erwin’s warm cheek. “When do I go?”

“Soon. Tomorrow.”

“It’s far?”

“Yes. Away from the sea – away from Emperor Titus.”

“Away from the sea?”

Erwin’s eyes showed pity, but he didn’t say he was sorry and he didn’t look away from me. “Yes.”

I longed for the sea. I had no way to tell him how deep the yearning went. But I had brought all of this on myself. If I’d listened to Farlan – to Isabel – we would all be there still, safe in the deep ocean, with almost no knowledge of humans and their complicated, dangerous world. I had wept for Isabel, but it would be wrong to weep for myself. I had no choice but to accept the consequences of what I had done. It was strange to think this way, when I’d been used to thinking of nothing but my own wants, but perhaps, if I helped Erwin to save his people from the man who wanted to take the kingdom from him, it would go some way to making up for what I had done to my friends?

“All right,” I told him. “I won’t fight you. I’ll go where you send me. Isabel is dead. I don’t know, but I _feel_ that Farlan is dead. I will do what you want me to do.”

Erwin took my hand, and bowed his head to kiss it.

“Thank you, Levi.”

I felt something, then, that was at once like desire and almost its opposite. Desire was inwards, with a hot rush of blood to my cock and the need for release; this came from my chest – from my heart – and reached out towards him with a feeling that was so intense it was almost painful, as though I had suddenly become too big for my skin. I had never felt anything quite like it, and, although it frightened me, I didn’t wish it gone.


	7. The King's Lake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My computer died, but I've patched it up again now. I will be continuing all the unfinished stories in time - thank you for your patience. 
> 
> In this chapter, Levi finally gets out of the tub!

At least, this time, they didn’t take me in a barrel. Hange had constructed a kind of closed tub with a sliding panel in the top that would allow me the freedom to look around once we were ‘clear of the city’. When Hange explained to me what a ‘city’ was, I told her I wanted to see it, but Erwin said no, we couldn’t afford to risk someone seeing me. Hange and Moblit had both tried to describe how we would be travelling – it apparently involved something called a _wheels_ which I couldn’t understand no matter how many drawings Moblit produced, and big animals called _horses_ which would pull us along in a _wagon_. It seemed I had already travelled in this way on my original journey from the ship to Erwin’s home, but trapped inside the barrel I had only been aware of sounds and motion. In the end Hange had sighed and told Moblit to stop drawing. “It’s easier to grasp when you see it. I hadn’t realised how vastly different our experiences would be – you living your whole life underwater. It’s fascinating, actually.”

I found it more frustrating than fascinating. If only it weren’t for Erwin and his shitty plans, Hange could have shown me everything. I wasn’t sorry to be leaving the tub and the cellar behind, but the idea of being even further from the sea gnawed at me. This new land life – these strange and horrible new ideas about fighting and war – what had happened to Isabel – all the bad things that had happened since I was stupid enough to insist on going to the surface had left me with a new, twisting feeling in my gut that tried to deter me from wanting to know any more and made me long to go back to the ocean. But nothing, it seemed, was enough to kill my damned stupid curiosity, not even Isabel’s death. In spite of everything, I still wanted to _know_.

When it was time to go, Erwin asked Moblit and Hange to wait outside while he said goodbye to me. My old tub was still in his room, and he knelt beside it to talk to me. “I wish there was another way,” he said. “But I think you’ll be happier in the lake.”

“I would be happier if you would be there too,” I admitted. “But you will come?”

“When I can. It may not be for a long time though.”

“How long?”

“I can’t say, Levi. But I’ll try to visit as soon as I can.”

He tried to kiss my hand again, but I pulled it away and dragged him towards me instead, gripping the front of his clothes. I kissed him properly, on the mouth, and after a moment he didn’t try to stop me.

When I let him go, he called Hange and Moblit into the room. If they noticed the dark places on his clothes from the water, they didn’t say anything about it. They wrapped me in a rough brown cloth, covering me completely so I couldn’t see anything, and I had to keep very still until we reached what seemed to be a small wooden room, a bit like the cell on the ship. The tub was on the floor, and Moblit lifted me into it. Then Hange gave me one of her not very reassuring smiles, whispered, “It won’t be long, Levi,” and slid the cover shut over my head.

For the first part of the journey I was almost as uncomfortable as I had been in the barrel. The motion was the same, and although there was a little more room in the tub, I still felt sick and disorientated. I tried to concentrate on sound to get some sense of the _city_ I was missing, but most of what I could hear was the same rumble I had heard on the first journey, and that regular plop-plop noise like water dropping in an echoing cave. Sometimes there were voices, but too muffled to make out the words. Then, abruptly, the plopping sound changed to a duller, repetitive thud-thud, and the motion changed subtly, too. I tried to sleep, since there was nothing else much to do, and it didn’t seem very long before the panel in the lid was opened and Hange appeared.

“Are you all right?” she asked brightly, those _glasses_ things in front of her eyes glinting in brilliant sunlight. I sat up, blinking, the upper half of my body out of the tub altogether. I rested my arms on the lid. Hange draped a cloak around my shoulders, annoying and heavy on my wet skin. She saw my expression and gave a sympathetic grimace. “Ugh – yes – that must feel odd. But we need you to look like an ordinary traveller. If anyone sees you from a distance, the sides of the wagon will hide the tub. Wearing this cloak you’ll just look like a rich man who doesn’t like riding, or an invalid. That way you can see everything. Look behind us!”

Now that my eyes were accustomed to the bright light, I followed the direction of her pointing finger, and saw… I wasn’t sure what, at first. A cream-coloured heap of stone, with coral-like protrusions. At the highest point, a small green object with a familiar pattern. “What is that?” I asked. “That green thing was in Erwin’s room!”

Hange seemed surprised. “You mean the flag? But what about the rest of the city?”

“City? Where?”

Hange pointed at the stone heap. “There! The royal capital!”

“But that’s just… some rocks. Like a reef, but smoother.”

“No – that was all built by people. I suppose… without a sense of scale, it doesn’t look all that impressive. But that tall tower there – the thing sticking up under the flag – that’s where King Erwin’s room is, so you can tell how big –”

“ _In_ there?”

“Yes.”

“So – it’s very far away?”

“About half a league, that’s all.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“No – and I’m not sure how to tell you… As we travel, I’ll mark distances for you. I suppose things must look very different under water.”

“Yes… We call it… the…” I couldn’t explain the gradations we use – the distances measured in visibility – the greening. “It’s about the colour of the water,” I told her. “How dark or light – how far you can see. It’s different at different… high and lownesses.”

“Depths?” Hange suggested.

“D _epths_ ,” I repeated. “But we – some of us - swim near the land sometimes, and there are words for distances in the air, too. Farlan, once…”

Hange looked away. She seemed sad. “Farlan… your other friend?”

“Yes.”

“He may have survived…”

“I’ll find him again,” I said. “ _If_ he survived, I’ll find him. When Erwin has what he needs.”

Hange gave me a strange look. I wasn’t sure what it meant. “I hope you do, Levi,” was all she said.

“Everything all right in here?”

Moblit’s voice was loud, near my ear; it startled me. I turned to find him looking at me over the side of the wagon – bobbing up and down on the back of a creature bigger than the biggest seal – perhaps the size of a young orca. Its long head, and the way it held it upright, reminded me of a shret - but on a gigantic scale.

“This is a horse?” I asked him.

“Yes. This is Daphne. She’s a good old girl.”

“Daphne, or horse?”

“She _is_ a horse. Daphne’s her name.”

Daphne made a noise like a small wave breaking. I’d never thought about giving an animal a name like a person. In the sea, we knew some of the dolphins by descriptions – Bent Fin, or Short Tail. Names of a kind, but not the sort of names you would give people.

I wanted to touch Daphne’s seal-looking coat, but I couldn’t reach far enough over the side of the wagon.

“I’ll introduce you properly when we stop for the night,” Moblit said. I nodded, and looked around at what I could see of the rest of our group. Apart from Hange, who was in the wagon with me, there were four other people on horses, not counting Moblit. I didn’t recognize any of them. There were two more wagons behind us, and I finally understood the concept of _wheels_. It was strange to think how very much stuck to the ground the humans were – only able to move _along,_ with almost none of what Hange had called _depths_. I thought of the place Erwin had taken me to so that I could see across his kingdom, and of the terrible height – the danger of falling through air. The sea had its dangerous places too, of course – the cold dark places far below the regions we inhabited – but the land seemed much worse. Only the birds were like us – free in their element. The humans’ legs gave them some freedom, but they were still essentially trapped against the earth. I didn’t envy them that. I didn’t envy them much at all.

 

We travelled all day. Hange told me that we were avoiding _towns_ and _villages_ , which were like cities but smaller, and that we would be stopping for the night at the foot of some hills that we would journey up into tomorrow. I listened to all her explanations, and wished, not for the first time, for a book and pencil of my own and the mysterious ability to _write_. Hange laughed when I told her that though, and shook her head. “I’ll teach you, if you like – but it’s not something you can learn in a day. There are different marks for different sounds, and from what I’ve heard of your language there are several sounds you use that we don’t. We’ll have to adapt. You tell me all the words you want me to write down for you, and I’ll make a list, with our words, and my approximation of yours. Then, when you do learn to read and write, we’ll already have the foundation of a dictionary!”

I hadn’t followed all of what she’d said, but I understood that learning to use the marks in the book would take a long time, so for the present, I tried to memorize as much as I could. It wasn’t easy though – there was so much to see. At first the land was open and covered in green plants a bit like some seaweeds, which Hange called _grass_ and _moss_. Then the _road_ passed between huge plants with brown, hard parts, and green softer-looking bits above: these, I soon learned, were _trees_ with _trunks_ and _branches_ made of wood, and green _leaves_.

“These are oak trees,” Hange told me. “We’re planting as many of these as we can, although they take years – a very long time – to grow. The wood of these trees is what we use to build our ships.”

“Erwin’s ships?” I asked.

“Yes – but not only those. King Erwin is thinking about the future, long after his own time. The trees we need to build ships are over a hundred years old – longer than a whole lifetime. We’re planting now so that the kingdom will be able to keep its navy strong for generations to come. King Erwin’s children, and their children after them, will use the trees we’re planting now.”

“King Erwin’s children? Children are the small ones? The new ones?”

“Yes.”

“Erwin - he told me he has no children.”

“No – not yet. His marriage will be a complex political problem. He needs to forge alliances…” Hange shook her head. “Sorry. You don’t know what any of that means, of course.”

I was struggling to understand, but I remembered what Erwin had told me about Emperor Titus. “He needs to get other kingdoms to… to be with him?” I asked. “To stop Titus?”

“Yes. And one way to do that is to marry a princess from a strong kingdom. Princess Marie, of Stohess, is the one most likely to become his wife.”

“Princess Marie…” I knew that Erwin would probably need a mate at some point, but I hadn’t expected that she was already as good as chosen – that he already knew her name. I didn’t like the feelings that the thought of Erwin with a mate stirred inside me. “Is she beautiful?” I asked.

Hange laughed rather harshly. “Well – not that it’s really relevant, but yes – I think so. The court painters present her as beautiful anyway, but they tend to flatter quite outrageously, so I don’t suppose we’ll know for certain until we actually see her.”

“Is she as beautiful as me?” I wanted to know. Hange smiled and shook her head. “They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You’re not like her at all, but I suppose you’re both beautiful in your own ways. She’s like Erwin – tall, with golden hair, and blue eyes… At court, that’s the fashion in beauty, at the moment. These things change, as all fashions do.”

I frowned. “I don’t know _fashions_.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. It’s about how people look and dress – among other things. But under the sea you don’t wear clothes, of course. Do you have any ways of decorating yourselves? Do you wear jewellery, or – I don’t know – necklaces made from shells?”

“What is _jewellery_ and _necklaces_?”

“Hm. You probably don’t then. Stones, or shells, or other pretty things, put around your arms or neck to look nice.”

“I – we found a dead sailor once, with gold in his ears. Like that?”

“Yes. Those are earrings. You don’t have anything like that?”

“Not – on our bodies, no. Isabel… Isabel kept things she found. Shiny things. Gold. The kinds of shells that shine. The – the small, round things that - ” I mimed a _hyr_ , putting one hand on top of the other, opening and closing – “that hyr make. White and round. They shine, but… soft shining.”

“Pearls!” Hange exclaimed. “Pearls, from oysters. So _hyr_ are oysters. What is your word for pearl?”

“Hyrthros,” I told her, as she reached for the book and pencil, which she had taken to carrying in a bag at her side. “It means the… the _oysters_? - yes? - the oysters’ _thros_ – the white that comes out of your –” In spite of what I’d done with Erwin, I still didn’t know the words for those things in the human language. I gestured towards my cock. Hange’s eyes widened, her face turned pink, and she laughed. “Really? That’s your word for pearl? Oyster… um - ejaculate? Hm, I suppose, underwater, it might tend to form spheres. I could devise an experiment…” Hange glanced towards Moblit, riding along side the cart but out of earshot, then shook her head. “Probably not. Well – it’s certainly an interesting derivation! Let me write it down…” She wrote in her book, smiling and shaking her head again. I didn’t understand why she’d gone pink, or why she found the word funny, but it seemed similar to the way Erwin had reacted when I’d talked about touching himself. Humans appeared to have some kind of incomprehensible difficulty with talking about anything to do with sex.

I was so distracted by Hange’s questions about words and by the thick mass of trees we were now passing through, which Hange told me was a _forest_ , that I forgot to ask any more questions about Erwin and the beautiful Princess Marie. I liked the forest. The way the sunbeams filtered down through the leaves above reminded me of the ocean. The light was greenish; the air was still and quiet. Even the noise made by the horses’ feet was dulled. Occasionally I caught sight of small, quick, reddish-brown creatures with long tails, fanned like dulse, leaping about in the high branches. Hange told me that they were called squirrels. They seemed freer than humans. I watched one running straight down a tree trunk headfirst without falling. I could barely lug my heavy body and tail about on land, and I knew that my actions in the air were sluggish and graceless. The agility of the squirrels impressed and depressed me; I longed for the ocean more than ever.

Eventually we reached the end of the forest, and travelled on into open country. The ground was still covered in short grass and moss, but there were patches of flat grey stone between the green places. The light had become a richer yellow and the clouds had turned pink. Hange called to the others, telling them that it was time to stop for the night. The horses pulled the three wagons into a group with a space in between them, and some of the men I didn’t know fetched bundles of wood they had collected in the forest and laid them in a shallow hole they had scraped into the ground and surrounded by stones. Moblit knelt down beside the pile of wood, and took a small metal box out of a concealed place in his clothes. He took something out of the box, and I started back, splashing water over the side of the tub, when something painfully bright seemed to shoot out of his hands. He bent over the heap of wood and blew, and soon the whole thing was consumed by red and yellow brightness, something like the light in the lamps on the ship, but much fiercer and more mobile.

I tried not to let Hange see that I was afraid when I asked her, “What is it?”

“It’s just a fire – Oh, I’m sorry, Levi. I didn’t think. I should have explained. Air temperatures… It gets very cold at night. The heat of the water in one place doesn’t change much at night, does it?”

“Only where it’s very… not many depths,” I replied.

“Where it’s shallow, yes. But here, the air gets cold quickly once the sun goes down, so we use fire to keep us warm. It’s like the lamps on the ship. But I suppose you only saw the light shining through the horn, and not the naked flames.”

“I thought that light on the ships was like the fish, far down. They have lights. But cold light - not this – _fire_.”

“You’ve seen that! Oh – I’d love to see fish like that! I’ve read about them. Luminescence. It’s a fascinating phenomenon.”

As so often with Hange, I didn’t understand most of the words that came out of her mouth, but I could usually grasp the general idea of what she was saying.

“I’ll catch you some,” I said, “when I go back to the ocean.”

She gave me the same strange look as when I’d mentioned finding Farlan, but I was too absorbed by the fire to worry about it.

The fire was like a living creature. There was nothing quite like it under the sea – not that I’d seen, anyway. Its colours were those of the brightest warm-water fish – yellow, red, orange - and it moved like the play of sunlight on scales, or the fluttering of fins, but it was as jumpy as a shoal of mackerel sensing predators nearby. The hissing and cracking it made was like nothing I’d ever heard, and it spat out little flecks of brightness that rose into the air around it. But it was the heat that surprised me most. Even from my tub in the back of the wagon, I could feel its warmth on my face, and I knew that getting close to it would be dangerous, drying out my skin and gills.

“It must –” I mimed biting.

“Yes. We don’t say _bite_ , though, we say _burn_ for fire. Fire burns. It hurts and destroys. But controlled, like this, it’s very useful.”

“I can’t go near.”

“No – no you must keep your gills from drying out. You should sleep under water in the tub. We’ll be eating cooked food and sleeping around the fire. We’ve brought fish for you. It’s packed in ice, from the castle icehouse, but I’m afraid it won’t be very fresh. Tomorrow we’ll reach the lake though, and you’ll be able to hunt again.”

As he had promised, Moblit led Daphne up to the side of the wagon, and I was finally able to touch her. Her coat was coarser than seal fur, but her big brown eyes had a similar intelligence, and I liked the way her long ears twitched. Her whiskery muzzle was very soft. Although they looked very different, I wondered whether animals were actually quite similar on land or in the sea, and it was only humans that were so very strange?

Hange brought me fish, which, as she had warned me, wasn’t as fresh as I would have liked, and then I retreated under the water to sleep. To keep my whole body from the heat of the fire, I had to curl sideways in a cramped, uncomfortable position, but I managed to fall asleep at last. I dreamed of open water.

 

The next day we travelled over increasingly stony ground. It sloped upwards for much of the time, and in places the angle was so steep that water sloshed over the side of the tub, leaving it half full. Fortunately Hange had foreseen that, and there were barrels of clean water in the other wagons. Just after what Hange called _noon_ , when the sun was at its highest in the sky, clouds gathered suddenly and a short time later it rained. I’d experienced rain during storms, of course, but then it had been impossible to tell it apart from sea-spray. All the others pulled hoods over their heads and grumbled about the wet, but I threw off the cloak they made me wear and let the raindrops fall onto my face and body. It was wonderful to finally feel and taste fresh water after so long in the humans’ shitty tubs, but the rain _shower_ , as Hange called it, was over very quickly, and only left me impatient to reach the lake.

 

By the time the sky began to darken we had stopped climbing, and for quite a while we travelled on a level surface. Suddenly we began a descent, and I saw water ahead of us, silver in the low light. Over to our right I could make out a regular patch of deeper darkness, and two, strange, glowing rectangles.

“That’s the hunting lodge,” Hange told me, pointing. The light is coming from the windows. Erwin sent servants ahead to prepare for our arrival. And over there –” she indicated the glimmer of water – “that’s the lake. You’ll be able to see it properly in the morning.”

“No – now,” I demanded. “I want to swim. Put me in the water now.”

“But it’s dark,” Hange said. “You won’t be able to see where you’re going, and in unfamiliar territory –”

“Are there – things that would kill me?” I remembered words from my early conversations with Hange on board the ship – “Predators? Sharks?”

“No – nothing like that. The worst you’d be likely to encounter would be a large pike, which would hardly be a threat to you.”

“Then put me in the water. I need the water.”

“It will be colder than the seas you’re used to. You might need to acclimatize – um – to adapt – get used to the cold.”

“We swim in cold seas,” I told her. “Cold and warm seas, at different times. The – the –” I had no word in the human language for the direction that I called _orm_ , and which I recognized from the feeling in my body when I swam that way, but I gave her the nearest approximation I could think of – “when we go the high, smooth way, we find the cold water. With the seals, and the orca.”

“The high, smooth way?” Hange shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“The easy way – without any –” I mimed pulling my hands apart, to try to convey the feeling of swimming against the tingling flow that gave us our sense of direction under the water, but it seemed that humans had nothing like it, and Hange only looked confused.

I sighed, frustrated. “It doesn’t matter. Put me in.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Hange nodded. “All right. Moblit and I will carry you.” The two of them lifted me out of the tub, and, accompanied by a guard holding a lantern, carried me down to the edge of the lake. The smell of the water was as good as drinking after a long thirst – a cold, fresh smell, lacking the ocean’s salt, but with a tang of metal and stone. They set me down in very shallow water and I had to haul myself forward a tail’s length, but then I was swimming freely for the first time since I was stupid enough to climb up onto that damned ship.

Hange had been right about the water being cold, but I didn’t care. It was untainted by humans, pure and perfect. I swam, turning, diving, exploring this new place, aware of surprising depth beneath me, finally free of the drag on my body when it was surrounded only by air in the human world. I was relieved that my gills still seemed to work properly.

At first I couldn’t concentrate on anything beyond the comfort of being properly immersed in water. I felt myself again – my body familiarly defined in its true element. But as I swam, I became aware of a weird disturbance in the flow of this lake. Following its natural lines, I came to a sudden stop just in front of a barrier I couldn’t see. It was as huge as a reef, but unnaturally regular, and it cut off the path of the flow. Beyond it, I could sense that there was more water – much more – but as I swam along the line of the barrier, I realized that there was no way to reach what was on the other side. I surfaced into a world suddenly brilliant with the light of the full moon, and saw, rising up in front of me, a massive wall of grey stone that blocked this part of the lake from whatever lay beyond. Looking back the other way, I made out the dark outline of the hunting lodge across the smooth, silver water. The lake was tiny compared to the sea, but bigger, and deeper, than I had feared. Erwin had miscalculated. If I wanted to, I could stay underwater in the deepest part of this lake for a very long time, and he would never be able to catch me.

I swam away from the barrier to the centre of the lake, and dived. It was very cool and still at the bottom. I could feel silt on the lakebed, but no plants or fish except for a few eels that swam away when I disturbed them. I slept, and dreamed about Farlan and Isabel, and when I woke up to brightness far above me, I realized that perhaps Erwin had known what he was doing after all. The lake was a big improvement on a barrel or a tub, but I was just as much a prisoner in it, and I was still alone.

 

I spent some time underwater, exploring my new surroundings. In the shallower parts there were plenty of fish, and, although most of them were small, I knew I wouldn’t go hungry. There were animals, too – weird creatures I’d never seen before that lived by the shore – cold to the touch, but without scales and finless, with mottled skin the colour of the stones on the lakebed, and odd, webbed feet. They didn’t taste bad. I thought about asking Hange what they were, but, although I was enjoying the relative freedom of the water, I was angrier than I’d expected to be at the realization that it was just another slightly less shitty kind of prison, and I decided to let the humans think that I might not come back – at least for a while.

The barrier bothered me. I’d never encountered anything that cut off the flow of water like that. It made the currents in the lake feel wrong. I could sense it even when I wasn’t close to it; it make my skin prickle oddly. Why couldn’t humans just leave things alone?

As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I laughed at myself. Who was the idiot who couldn’t leave the humans’ ship alone in the first place? But they had decided to travel on the sea – to risk their pathetic, fragile lives in an element even more hostile to them than the land was to me. If they hadn’t been there, where they had no business to be, Isabel wouldn’t be dead. Farlan…

I thought of Erwin, and found that my jaw was clenched tight, although whether I was more angry at him, or at myself for thinking about him, I wasn’t sure. I turned a wide circle in the water until I was facing away from the direction of the barrier, and swam straight towards the hunting lodge at top speed, keeping near to the surface to that Hange and the others would probably be able to see me if they were looking – a blue and sliver shadow under the water racing towards them. I broke the surface not far from the shore, and got my first look at the lake in daylight – long and smooth-watered, with two small, grassy islands near the centre – surrounded by dark hills. The hunting lodge was made of grey stones, and stood at one end of the lake. The barrier cut off the water and the view at the other end. Hange stood on the shore below the lodge, waving her arms around like someone who had touched the wrong kind of eel. I ignored her, and swam away to explore the islands. There were birds nesting there – some in the trees, small, brown and fast, and others on the ground that were fatter and slower with dull orange webbed feet like gulls, and one, quick, bright, flashing thing of a brilliant blue that dived for small fish almost faster than my eyes could follow. That one, Isabel would have loved. I watched the birds for a long time, trying not to look back to see if Hange was still waiting on the shore, but in the end boredom got the better of me, and I swam over to where she stood. I stayed in the water, and looked at her. The sunlight glinted on her glasses.

“Levi! What do you think of your new home?”

“My what?” I said, frowning so she would know I wasn’t delighted with what she clearly thought was Erwin’s generosity in sending me here.

“Your home. The place where you live. The lake.”

“I know _home_. This is _not_ my home. The sea is home! This _lake_ is a shitty cell, like the ship, like the tub, like the barrel.”

Hange looked surprised. “But this is better isn’t it?”

I didn’t answer her. “What’s _that_ shitty, stupid thing?” I asked instead, pointing back at the barrier.

“What – the dam? That’s – We didn’t make that to keep you a prisoner, Levi. That was built at the same time as the hunting lodge – to make this lake as it is now, so that Erwin’s grandfather would have fish to catch, and a nice view over the lake. Before the dam was built, the lake was smaller – not so pretty.”

“I hate it. It stops the water – the…” I could only make a gesture with my hands to show her the flow of the lake – the way it was supposed to go.

“Well, the sluices are closed now. The water level is quite low – we’ve had three hot years in a row. But the water can move to the lower level.”

“It wants to move. It’s… pushed.” I brought my palms together to show her the weird pressures in the lake. “You need to let it out.”

“We can’t do that, Levi. You might be washed away! We hoped – we all hoped that you would like it here.”

I shook water droplets out of my hair. “It’s not bad, but that _dam_ is bad. There are good fish. Small, but good. And a blue bird. Fast like –” I made a downward swoop with one hand.

“Ah, you’ve seen a kingfisher! Yes – they’re quite a sight, aren’t they?”

“Kingfisher?” I repeated. “King – like Erwin?”

Hange smiled. “Yes. That bird is the king of catching fish. And dressed like a king, too!”

“Birds don’t have clothes,” I told her, pretending disdain, although I knew perfectly well what she meant, and the idea almost made me smile in spite of myself.

“Of course, real kings aren’t usually all that good at fishing,” Hange was saying, gazing out over the lake. “That’s why Erwin the Eleventh had this lake made and well stocked with fish. If there’s a bad breeding year, we have more brought in from the abbey fishponds in the capital. So you can eat all you like, Levi – we won’t run out!”

I scowled at her, offended. “I eat two, only, every day. You _won’t_ run out. And there are other things… I found… I don’t know the word. Small, animals, but cold like fish. Legs like this –” I held up my arms in imitation of the way the strange creatures splayed their legs, and pointed to the slight webbing between my fingers – “Like this, but more. They aren’t bad to eat.”

“Frogs!” Hange exclaimed. “Oh – yes – you wouldn’t have come across those in the sea. They’re amphibians – cold blooded, living on land and in the water. They can stay under water for a long time, but they have lungs, so we’re not sure how they manage it. I did read a theory that they can breathe through their skin – I’d love to research that! There will be mammals in the lake too I’m sure – water voles, otters… I don’t know what else. We should write down the words – you can make a start on reading and writing. I’ll get a book…”

Hange ran back towards the hunting lodge, moving quite fast. It was funny, the way human legs bent and unbent at the middle, like the frogs’ legs, but in front rather than out to the side. Walking was weird – running even stranger. I laughed quietly, but once Hange had gone I found myself looking back towards the islands, hoping for another glimpse of the kingfisher. It annoyed me, knowing that from now on I would always associate it with Erwin. Why was his stupid, handsome face always in my mind? Why couldn’t I just forget about him? And why did I feel a strange, aching weight in my chest and my belly when I thought about him that reminded me of the uneasy feeling of swimming against the flow, or the oppressive presence of that dam across the lake? I didn’t like it. I hated not being able to shake it from me. Nothing had ever caught at me like this before. I thought of the fish, brought to the lake just to be prey for the king when he felt like fishing, and I found myself sympathizing with them.

Hange returned with her book and pencil. She sat on the pebbly shore and took of the clothes on the lower parts of her legs, then walked out into the water. “We’ll use that flat boulder as a table,” she called to me as she approached. I swam as close to the big stone as I could, but the water was soon too shallow for swimming, and the pebbles on the lakebed were sharp. She reached the stone, and sat on it, the book on her legs. I pulled myself carefully over the pebbles, and sat beside her, my tail in the water. She looked around, suddenly cautious. “We should be alone here,” she said. “But if anyone comes along the road, you’ll have to get back in the water, and stay submerged.”

“Who would come?” I asked. “Erwin?”

“No, not yet. But there is a village, at the other end of the big lake, below the dam. No one comes up here usually, though. Fishing here, in the King’s Lake is forbidden, and Erwin allows fishing in the lower lake, so there’s no need for poaching – taking fish or game that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Even the fish are Erwin’s?” I asked, astonished.

“Everything is Erwin’s,” Hange replied, and I wasn’t sure, but I thought she was only half joking.

We spent much of the day there at the water’s edge, with occasional pauses when I swam a little to keep my gills wet, or Hange went back to the lodge for food. By the end of the day I could recognize most of the sounds and their letters, and I could write my name. Hange seemed very pleased at my progress, even when the book got rather wet and some of the words went watery. I told her my words for the things I recognized, although I had none for kingfisher, duck, frog, moorhen, or many of the freshwater fish beyond _fish_.

I didn’t let her know it, of course, but I found that I was enjoying my time learning with Hange. When the sky began to darken and she went back to the lodge, the thought of the coming night alone in the lake wasn’t appealing. In the sea I had rarely been alone for more than half a day at a time. I sometimes hunted alone, but there had always been others nearby, and I had grown up with Farlan, and then Isabel. I missed them with that hard, physical pain in my gut that hadn’t softened since I’d first seen Isabel’s body through that horrible murky glass. Hange had done that – Hange had put her there. Erwin had told her to do it. I shouldn’t be talking to either of them – I shouldn’t be teaching Hange our language. I ought to hate all the humans, with their strange, disturbing ideas, their ships, and their wars. But as I swam out into the lake to find somewhere comfortable to sleep away from the weird pressure caused by that dam, I knew I was looking forward to seeing Hange tomorrow, and beyond that, to the day when Erwin would come, as he had promised.

 

I woke suddenly, when it was still dark, to the certainty that I was not alone. I couldn’t see much, but I could sense the density of large, living things in the water around me, warm, and close. Seals? But Hange hadn’t mentioned seals, and these didn’t move like seals, deliberately surrounding me, keeping still. I was almost sure that I knew what these shadowy presences were. Had the humans lied to me again? No – Erwin and Hange would never have gone to so much trouble to capture me and bring me all the way here in the wagon if they’d had the slightest idea that, living in the King’s Lake next to Erwin’s hunting lodge, and presumably trapped by that dam just as much as I was, there were already other Mer.


End file.
